Apparently, the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump hasn’t tired of picking trade fights with allies and partners. Last month, the United States announced that it was withdrawing from international talks on tax reform — negotiations driven by the rise of electronic commerce — and threatened to retaliate against countries that adopted new taxes without its participation in the discussions.
The U.S. position reflects a pro-business outlook that is hostile to all new taxes, coupled with the Trump administration’s disdain for international agreements that it does not dictate. Rejection of years of work does the world a disservice; the likely patchwork of taxes that will follow will harm the businesses his administration wants to protect.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimates that 1.4 billion people shopped online in 2018, spending $25.6 trillion, an 8 percent increase over the previous year, and equal to about 30 percent of global GDP. The U.S. topped the list of countries with e-commerce sales ($8.6 trillion), Japan was second ($3.2 trillion) and China was third ($2.3 trillion). When ranked by e-commerce sales as a share of the total economy, South Korea surpasses all countries with a staggering 84 percent, Japan is second (66 percent), the U.S. is third (42 percent), while China’s digital sales account for a meager 17 percent of its gross domestic product.