The UK Needs Tariffs on EU Trade

John Sydenham

Tariffs bring production home. They favour domestic companies over Multinational Corporations.

Global trade is a zero sum game: one country’s gain is another country’s loss. Over the past 25 years the UK has had a fire sale of property, business and other assets to pay for its huge trade deficit. This deficit is largely with the EU.

The trade deficit is the difference between the value of exports and the value of imports. It is the difference between the the total value of what we sell to other countries and what we buy from them. The deficit with the EU was £98.6 Billion in 2023 and is getting bigger every year:

(Source: ONS Series L86I)

When Kier Starmer was asked whether he preferred Davos to Westminster he replied “Davos”, he preferred rule by Multinational Corporations to Democracy in the UK. (The reasons for this are outlined in this article).

International Trade benefits the Multinational Corporations (Davos) whether it is a surplus or a deficit because they make their profits from International Trade. What they want is for the total volume of International Trade to increase and national production to be eclipsed.

Why don’t the people of the UK recoil from the Trade Deficit in shock? The mainstream media in the UK are controlled by Multinational Corporations and International Banks and the BBC are ideological Internationalists. Coverage of the true trading position with the EU has been no-platformed. Where it is mentioned it is always by an Internationalist spokesperson who will say “International Trade is not a zero sum game”.

Of course International Trade is a zero sum game. The UK is selling its assets to pay for the deficit and still plunging into ever greater deficit because it is selling all of its industry to foreigners who ship the profits abroad. Factories are turned into assembly plants using foreign made parts. Rail, gas, water and electricity are sources of income for foreign companies. Factories are turned into warehouses. Offices become empty as staff are located in cheaper overseas locations. Migration is used to increase the price of domestic property so that foreign investors can get high rents and appreciation.

Internationalists will deride the British. They will say: “if you made goods that people want there would be no deficit”. They will then say that if we join the EU again the barriers mounted by the EU against British goods will be removed. A lot of people cannot follow an argument from one sentence to another: either the British cannot make the goods people want or the EU are erecting barriers to British goods to gain maximum benefit from the EU-UK Free Trade Agreement.

The EU is a huge nearby country that has merged its Multinational Corporations into behemoths. These corporations can buy successful British businesses solely to replace them with their own operations. The UK is related to the EU by the same financial forces that concentrate wealth in the SE of England and impoverish the regions: production and wealth gravitate to where the money is. In the EU the region circled on the map is where our wealth has gone and will continue to go if the UK were to Rejoin the EU or continue the Free Trade deal with the EU.

If the UK Rejoins then it will always have a Trade Deficit with the EU, like the NE of England always has a deficit with London.

The problem of the Trade Deficit can be easily solved with Trade Tariffs. Trade Tariffs hurt Multinational Corporations but, if introduced slowly, will be a boon to the people of Britain. See Tariffs and Economic Growth.

A huge trade deficit is a disaster for ordinary English people. They are being priced out of property and have no prospect of better wages because of the high migration that is used to raise property prices and keep wages down. Our politicians have become so corrupt and Internationalist that they think it is racist to favour the people who elected them. They are even deliberately replacing the English to get their way. Yet still the British support the Internationalist Parties: Labour, Conservative and LibDem. The kamikaze British are a testament to the power of the Multinationals and Internationalists in the UK.

PS: It is interesting that Starmer and Reeves, with unerring stupidity, have sided with the EU on free trade rather than the USA. It will be economic suicide to lose our trade surplus with the USA and increase our trade deficit with the EU. Although another explanation for Starmer’s actions is that he wants to destroy the UK.

According to the ONS, in 2023 the UK imported £57.9 billion of goods from the United States (10.0% of all goods imports) and exported £60.4 billion of goods (15.3% of all goods exports). In 2023, the UK imported £57.4 billion of services from the United States (19.5% of all services imports) and exported £126.3 billion of services (27.0% of all services exports).

In 2023 the total of import of goods and services from the USA was £115.3 Billion and the total export of goods abd services to the USA was $186.7 billion. The balance of trade with the USA was £71.4 billion in surplus. This compares with a £98 billion deficit with the EU.

Starmer’s choice to back the EU rather than the USA was an appalling mistake. He should have ripped up the UK-EU Free Trade deal (FTA) and continued with the current terms of trade with the USA (terms that are profitable and save us from chlorinated chicken).

We cannot have an FTA with both the EU and the USA. This is because if the USA had no tariffs with the UK and 20% tariffs with the EU then the EU could avoid tariffs by exporting through the UK.

PPS: The overall current account deficit with the EU is huge. The UK is not recouping any of its EU trade deficit through non-trading activity. The opposite is the case, the Current Account Deficit with the EU was £142 billion in 2023:

Balance of Payments Current Account with EU :

All those rents, dividends and profits are being shipped home to the EU.