Jason Furman: belief

Transcript context

…But general EU policy toward the tech companies. So there’s privacy law there’s taxes. I don’t think you want to put it all in one bucket. Antitrust — the cases against Google were brought through a very technocratic, relatively independent, I think, honest process. The tax proposals are coming from politicians, and yes, absolutely, your public choice models, I think, apply a lot more to those politicians. Those politicians are right that they’re missing out on a bunch of taxes they should be getting. They’re wrong to have sector-specific levies and proposals, in some case, jury-rigged just to get at American companies. So yes, antitrust in Europe, I think, is fair. Taxes is a bit anti-American, if you want to call it that. And privacy, I’m less sure of the answer to. My guess is it’s more that’s what Europeans believe as a belief about the world and not a form of protectionism. It seems that they don’t mind Huawei for their 5G networks. There’s a big emphasis on privacy. And until Trump pressured them, Germany was fine. “We’ll have Huawei in to do our 5G network.” Doesn’t that seem discordant to you?…

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