INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Bertin Martens, a senior fellow at a European economics-focused think tank called Bruegel, broke down in April how practical it could be for
the EU to attack digital platforms, noting, "there is a question of whether such retaliation is even feasible."The EU could possibly use a
impose digital services tariffs.But "platforms with substantive presence in the EU cannot be the target of trade measures" under that law,
That could create a carveout for the biggest tech giants who have operations in the EU, Martens suggested, but only if those operations are
deemed "substantive," a term that the law does not clearly define.To make that determination, officials would need "detailed information on
the locations or nationalities" of all the users that platforms bring together, including buyers, sellers, advertisers and other parties,
Martens said.This makes digital services platforms "particularly difficult to target," he suggested
And lawmakers could risk backlash if "any arbitrary decision to invoke" the law risks "imposing a tax on EU users without retaliatory effect
services exports in the way that experts recommend."A surprising potential consequence of digital tariffs could be the accelerated
development and adoption of open-source technologies," Shah wrote
turn to open-source solutions that can be locally deployed without triggering tariff thresholds." Such a shift could potentially "profoundly
affect the competitive landscape in areas like cloud infrastructure, AI frameworks, and enterprise software," Shah wrote.In that imagined
future where open source alternatives rule the world, Shah said that targeting digital imports by tariff systems could become ineffective,
"inadvertently driving adoption toward open-source alternatives that generate less economic leverage."
