A scare story recently reported that reversion to WTO tariffs if we left the EU 'without a deal' would be very costly.We would have to trade at crippling levels of tariffs.
Today, an economist from the Adam Smith Institute of all places says that assumes we would charge maximum tariffs on imports. The conclusion is contaminated by Adam Smith Institute optimism and liberal economic rationalism but nevertheless:
You report (4 November) on how Brexit will raise the cost of living by as much as £930 per year for a household, based on research published in the National Institute Economic Review. There is a certain logical problem with this assertion...
The WTO allows charging any rate up to the maximum, including zero, after a 'most favoured nation' deal.
Yes, obviously, politics is involved here – but even so, why would we do something as blitheringly stupid as making ourselves poorer in this manner? The entire point of trade itself is to gain access to those imports of the things that foreigners make better or cheaper than we ourselves do. The only rational trade stance to have is thus unilateral free trade, which this country experimented with, most successfully, after the repeal of the Corn Laws. Brexit offers us the opportunity to do that again – to obey the WTO insistences on MFN [most favoured nation] status and charge ourselves nothing for our purchases of the goods and services of the world. As other research has shown, this will make us all richer, not poorer.
Of course, this will then raise doubts about the opposite and contradictory fear, also voiced now and then -- a flood of cheap imports.
Will someone please settle a reasonable price for off-season strawberries?
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