two takes on this: a) yes the US doing this for many years is silly and it is fair for the EU to want reciprocal treatment b) but reality is EU needs tourism from the US more than vice versa. I wonder if this will face outcry in practice from EU tourism dependent companies and countries and a rollback.
Yeah I pretty much agree. The combination of the US being chronically better than the rest of the rich world at increasing its GDP and being chronically worse at infrastructure pretty much guarantees that the US will become more and more of an exporter of people going elsewhere to spend their free time (and full time)
Re b) I'd be very surprised if an $8 fee and an online form every 3 years deters anyone from taking a trip to Europe from the US Perhaps the bigger concern for US folks is before they could just 'go live in Europe' for a while, which ETIAS now effectively restricts It's unclear how big the latter group is