> What you are describing are Trump's steel tariffs, which indeed make no sense and do exactly what you say.
That's exactly what I'm describing. The US can't compete with low cost producers on steel, so it is seeking to raise barriers to competition.
Although I will point out there's at least one target for steel tariffs that would be very beneficial: Russia. The US imports four times as much steel from Russia as it does from China, and nearly as much as it does from Mexico. I'd much rather see those imports go to Canada and Mexico. The US can freely shut down all trade with Russia to zero negative economic effect for the US. Russia imports a mere $7 billion worth of US goods, ie it's a meaningless export market for the US (while the US buys $17 billion worth of Russian goods, ~1.4% of their economy).
Europe largely can't compete on technology with the US, failing for the last 10, 30, 50 years to build competitive companies and products of the scale that the US has. While the US has 40 or 50 large technology companies, the EU has a comparable four or five. So up the barriers go. I don't see how a 3% revenue tax is going to change the balance much though, they'll have to get a lot more draconian.
This policy by the EU is an admission of dysfunction and failure of the EU system. They can't get their countries to implement what some consider proper tax policies individually, so they're going to attempt (and likely fail) to get a unanimous vote on this revenue tax.
There are 20 countries in Europe with statutory corporate tax rates either just a bit above Google, near it, or below it. The effective rates are that much lower. Most of Europe is turning into a very low corporate tax haven. Except for a few nations, such as France, which has an infamously high corporate income tax rate. I can't imagine what the complaint is exactly given all of those low tax rates, other than that the spoils are overwhelmingly going to eg Ireland and other EU members with larger populations are jealous. I see this primarily as an attempt at wealth redistribution by Germany and France in their favor vs small lower tax EU nations.
Ireland has a GDP per capita nearly twice that of France now, in part due to their low tax policies. It's obviously in France's interest to try to pry some of that away from them.