The customs paper was bizarre in many ways. The government put forward two highly imaginative suggestions, both of which raised many more questions than they answered. The paper gets a lot wrong. It gets the basic premise of what a customs union is wrong (They are for imposition of a common external tariff and the removal of internal tariffs, rather than removal of non-tariff-barriers[NTBs]), confusing it with customs agreements. It speaks about removal of NTBs (which the single market handles), without mentioning the single market once. It argues essentially for a position which is impossible according to the EU's rec lines, and would ultimately be pointless. The end result it would seem, is to move to a new, technically demanding system that will be an enormous effort to implement, in order to have things stay exactly as they are now, with no possibility of future change. Joe Owen from the Institute for Government does a good job explaining some of these issues (click the tweets to follow the threads):
With the release of the government position paper on customs and lots of words like ‘bespoke’/‘frictionless’/‘interim’/‘ new tech’… 1/
— Joe Owen (@jl_owen) August 15, 2017
1. In talking of the EU Customs Union, today's government paper is an exercise in deceit. https://t.co/wbTAeL7J7y
— RichardAENorth (@RichardAENorth) August 15, 2017
The issue of the Irish border is inextricably linked to future customs policy, and is useful in illustrating some of the problems with the proposed plans. Both sides want everything to remain exactly as they are today, with there being for all intents and purposes, no border whatsoever. This will not work, because the border will provide a backdoor to the EU for goods and people, something the EU will absolutely not accept. In order for there to be an even remotely frictionless border then, we must align ourselves with the EU and never diverge, as Samuel Lowe explains:
One prerequisite for a frictionless Irish border is that the UK maintains and continues to follow the EU food safety regime ... forever.
— Samuel Lowe (@SamuelMarcLowe) August 16, 2017
On to the trade papers from both the IEA and Economists for Free-Trade's Patrick Minford. Both are frankly ridiculous and have been rightly torn apart. Both rely on on traditional libertarian economic trade theory, and take no account whatsoever of the realities of modern trade. The IEA paper in particular also makes some really bad errors around Most Favoured Nation (MFN) rules and what it will mean if we become a third country in trade terms. Both also focus on tariffs, with barely any mention of NTBs. Both hardly mention services, which account for 80%+ of our economy. Follow the threads below. My favourite trade guy Samuel Lowe goes first. It really is worth reading these threads in full:
I've started reading the actual report, and I'm not yet convinced the author knows how trade liberalisation actually works. pic.twitter.com/8ctn8e0zXF
— Samuel Lowe (@SamuelMarcLowe) August 18, 2017
Second par of this piece is so spectacularly stupid I'm honestly not sure I have the vocabulary to do it justice https://t.co/fOSdTlFWEa
— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) August 18, 2017
This is pg1 of IEA paper. Either it doesn't understand WTO rules. Or it expects EU to drop all tariffs for everyone. pic.twitter.com/ahXRvvKsIo
— Marcus Leroux (@marcusleroux) August 18, 2017
1. The Leave Alliance does not in any way endorse the IEA's latest paper...https://t.co/MhUlr4XFmj #Brexit
— The Leave Alliance (@LeaveHQ) August 18, 2017
Earlier this year Patrick Minford wrote a paper claiming unilateral tariff disarmament would be great for UK manufacturing.
— Samuel Lowe (@SamuelMarcLowe) August 20, 2017
Prof Winters critiques the only economic study showing #Brexit will benefit UK & finds it 'doubly misleading': https://t.co/RN35aMb31C
— UK TPO (@uk_tpo) April 24, 2017
An amazing detail from Minford's "Economists for Brexit" paper - they believe there are border checks on the Northern Ireland/Irish border. https://t.co/lms0QKNiGY
— Steve Peers (@StevePeers) August 20, 2017
@GMCC_Alex