The British "Economist" recently published an article pointing out that the so-called "reciprocal tariffs" of the US government may trigger countermeasures from trading partners, which will bring serious crisis to the US service exports, which currently have a huge surplus.

The Economist calculated according to the method used by the United States to formulate the "reciprocal tariff" rate and concluded that in order to correct the current imbalance in service trade, countries need to impose an average tariff of 19% on the US service industry. The article said that countries can counter the United States through antitrust investigations, data control or digital service taxes. However, doing so will harm the interests of domestic companies and consumers, just as the United States' tariffs on commodity trade will harm the interests of the American people.

In the past few decades, the United States has been committed to reducing barriers to service trade in international negotiations. Now, does the United States want to use high tariffs as a negotiating tool to expand service exports, or will it maintain tariff barriers no matter what? If it is the latter, countries may counter the US service trade and hit the most competitive multinational companies in the United States.