are available here<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe problem with the chart is that it is complete nonsense. Trump has made up numbers and then halved them, and called them the US tariff rate.<\/p>\n
For example, the average tariff rate in the EU on US imports is around three per cent, because such charges apply to so few products. That's it. In other words, a reciprocal tariff of three per cent might have been justified. Such tariffs already exist.<\/p>\n
Then there is, of course, VAT, or value added tax.<\/p>\n
VAT is not a tariff. It is a domestic sales tax charged on all products sold in the EU irrespective of the point of origin. Precisely because it does not discriminate, it is not and cannot be a tariff. To suggest it is such a thing is absurd. Any serious economist and tax expert would agree. Trump disagrees. He claims it is a tariff.<\/p>\n
But then consider that the average EU VAT rate is around twenty per cent, although the appropriate weighting for US imports is a little hard to know. So, adding the average VAT rate onto the three per cent tariff rate comes to a little over 20 per cent in so-called tariffs for the EU. Trump claims it is 39 per cent. The UK, on the other hand, he claims to have a 10 per cent rate, and the UK's VAT happens to be at EU average rates, meaning that neither claim makes any sense at all.<\/p>\n
If the UK exploits this, we will lose out very badly.<\/p>\n
Serious problems on the border in Ireland already look to be very likely.<\/p>\n
The point is, imposing taxes on the basis of works of fantasy is not a rational economic act. It is, instead, an act of aggression. The UK has to realise that it is just a pawn in that war.<\/p>\n
Will we?<\/p>\n
Will we have the sense to say that the UK's tariff rate makes no more sense than the EU's does?<\/p>\n
Will we have the sense to not mention Brexit?<\/p>\n
Will we have the sense to align with the EU against the aggressor, from whose actions we are also suffering?<\/p>\n
Or will we fall into Trump's trap?<\/p>\n
I fear it will be the last. We would pay a high price for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the first of a series of tables put out by the US government yesterday to supposedly justify what it calls reciprocal tariffs: Others
Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,35,44,118,106,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-age-of-aggression","category-economics","category-europe","category-labour","category-politics","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81334,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81332\/revisions\/81334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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