Tit for tat: British tariffs to match EU tariffs

By Kevan Stafford

Nissan has agreed to invest in building new car models at its Sunderland plant. Since June’s Brexit vote to quit the EU and the threat of Britain being forced out of the EU Single Market, it had been feared that Nissan might end its commitment to car production in this country. British exporters of cars to Europe are faced with possible EU tariffs of 10% under default World Trade Organisation rules, and 7,000 jobs at the Sunderland plant and a further 20,000 jobs in the north east region as a whole were at risk.

There is no justified connection between free movement of people and free trade, but EU officials nevertheless demand that in order for Britain to have access to the free trade EU Single Market we must continue to allow unlimited EU migration into Britain with free access to our health, education and welfare services, continue paying billions into EU coffers and continued free movement of capital to enable those born outside the UK to buy up our industries, our land, our farms and our homes.

Britain wants to continue trading freely with European countries, but also wishes to enter into trade agreements with other countries around the world, which EU membership presently prohibits. If we do not agree to free movement of EU migrants then the EU threatens to prohibit Britain’s full membership of the EU Single Market, forcing us to rely on World Trade Organisation rules under which the EU would add a tariff of 4% to the price of all our goods and services exported to the EU, and a higher rate of 10% on our export of cars.

It has been suggested that the government must have promised Nissan compensation for the 10% tariff imposed on exporters to Europe, although the government denies there will be any direct taxpayer hand out, merely that it will support the competitiveness of the British car industry. However, there is a solution which would solve Nissan’s tariff problem at no cost to the British taxpayer. Britain would be within its rights to reciprocate against the EU’s imposition of tariffs on the likes of Nissan, or any other car manufacturer, or other exporter of goods and services of any king – by charging identical tariffs on all European products imported into Britain.

As Britain imports considerably more goods and services from Europe than we export to Europe, a tit for tat imposition of tariffs on EU exporters to Britain would produce a large profit which could finance the bureaucratic task of collecting tariffs and redistributing them as compensation to our own exporters.

Hopefully, however, the foolish EU officials would acknowledge the absurdity of trading nations charging each other identical tariffs, and instead agree mutual zero tariffs. Britain would have access to the EU Single Market whilst being outside of Single Market membership. The mere threat of us imposing reciprocal tariffs might be enough to deter EU officials from imposing their tariffs, but if they did so they would become the laughing stock of the entire world. The EU would be shooting themselves in the foot for the sake of a mass immigration ideology which was allegedly devised as a Jewish plot in the 1920s by the Marxist Frankfurt School, designed to deliberately fragment western nations and render them defenceless against communist takeover and control. The EU is a truly monstrous organisation and the sooner it disappears the better.