Franglais:
Rjan:
…
Rjan “Quite possibly, if those countries want to impose tariffs.”
Under WTO rule tariffs are imposed according to those already existing rates. It is not a case of a country choosing to impose tariffs. If a country chooses to drop tariffs against one country, which is allowed, they must drop tariffs against all countries for that product. If the EU chooses to drop automobile tariffs against the UK, it must drop similar tariffs against USA, China, India and all countries, even those who don`t yet have a car industry.
Indeed. My point is that we must either already be in a position where that country is imposing tariffs (i.e. nothing will change), or we must be in a position where that country has already wanted to drop tariffs and accept tariff-free imports.
I’ve already dealt with the intra-EU trade issue, by pointing out that competition between economic peers for export share, is bad for workers because it drives down pay and conditions, and what we lose in export (on cars) we will gain by penalising imports. Every car export we don’t sent to the continent, will be offset by car exports the content will no longer send here.
The idea of ruinous competition between European firms went out in the 1920s, with the development of the great industrial monopolies and the carving up of exclusive markets. It’s utterly foolish for socialists to be arguing for market competition.
If a potential buyer wants a new gizmo they look at specs and prices. If a buyer in mainland EU has a choice between similar gizmos they will choose the cheaper, wont they? A gizmo, UK made and taxed, will either be dearer in EUland and so not sold, or will represent less profit for the maker. New factories will be built where goods aren`t taxed. The single market is clearly important.
But by the same logic, the British buyer will look at those tariffed imports and instead prefer untaxed domestic production. New factories will be built in Britain, rather than on the continent to import tariff-free back into Britain.
Your argument implicitly rests on some unidentified widget that is high-value, high-profit, and produced in one place on a large scale, and for some unstated reason Britain is capable of outdoing the French and Germans (other than on pay and conditions) in competing to produce this high-profit widget.
In reality, these widgets have their profits driven low, and the wages of their workers driven to minimum. The workers who get the production lose out because of competition, and the workers who don’t get the production lose out twice over - firstly in lost wages, and then secondly in imports of the same ■■■■ widget on which they can’t even impose penalty tariffs.
Let’s look at real industries - steel, coal, cars, - these are the industries that require the most scale, and even these are produced in scores if not hundreds of places in the EU.
If manufacturers need to produce goods made in the UK to be cheaper to produce, in order to offset tariffs, then wages will be driven lower!
Wages for exports could be driven lower. But as I’ve explained, there is no profit in exports anyway, when there is competition.
We live in a global economy. We can all point to the disadvantages of this, and they certainly exist, but Brexit will not end or reverse that.
Then we have to start fighting it. Perhaps there must be a return to war. That is the only end-game - either economic competition ceases, or it intensifies into military confrontation.
Is the Jaguar plant really in competition with the Vauxhall one?
It must be at some level, to the extent that they both produce cars with broadly equivalent function. Unless the suggestion is that, if we bulleted one of these plants, it’s former clients would return to walking on foot or using the bus, rather than purchase a car from the other.
Rjan “But there will also be a massive reduction in supply of workers, by the shutting of the single market.”
Seen the Tory plans to bring in workers from other countries to work in our fields if farmers cant get cheap EU labour any more? Surely you have
They already have executed this plan! I’m pretty sure I was the first one here to point out the Tories’ appealing record on immigration, which always spirals and is currently at a record-high, driven by non-EU immigration.
You can hardly have forgotten that I’m a staunch opponent of the Tories (and the right-wing in general).
Rjan “Moreover, the question is not necessarily the size of the overall pie, but the distribution of it - if the professional classes are hit harder, then many workers could benefit, by lower wages at the top, and increased bargaining power at the bottom.”
Maybe so, but that is a subject for domestic politics really. Not an EU issue as such, there isn`t the same wealth gap in Sweden as in the UK.
Perhaps their boss class are more reasonable. In reality, in Britain, we need to use the force of the state (or the threat of it) against the worst and to manage transition - capital controls, tariffs, and so on.
Rjan “Why do foreign societies produce such a surplus of investment capital? Is it is in the interests of workers here to cede to foreign ownership, where large money interests are not accountable to our democracy?”
Wealth knows no borders.
As I said before we live in a global economy, it has ups and downs, good and bad aspects, but it is where we are.
Nobody is arguing about where we are. It’s where we want to be that the argument is about. Wealth does know borders, just as democratic systems know borders - it’s just you’re implicitly arguing that wealth shouldn’t know borders, whilst the democracies in the EU do still know their national borders.
