Intel Corp (INTC)

[mmoy]

The amounts for Intel and Microsoft were pretty small compared to the amounts that they're talking about today and yes, this is kind of a trade war. The thing is that we're likely going after some state-supported banks (TBTF) which the governments there would have to bail out if they were in danger of going under.

There are all kinds of retaliation possible but one that US companies could use is to shut down employment in Europe to move to the UK or elsewhere.

There's an opinion piece in the WSJ this morning over this issue that proposes that US companies withdraw from European markets. It's an interesting idea though I think that a lot of companies really don't want to leave money on the table.