Nissan to build a new plant.

wotsthat

michaels wrote: »

But a lot less than the govt would receive if it added the same 10% tariff to the 2m cars we import each year....

You buy a German car and pay £5k tax - the government then give that tax (via Nissan) to a European consumer to pay their tax bill.

That's bonkers already but because of the balance of trade in cars somehow I'm looking for a tax cut greater than £5k?

mrginge

wotsthat wrote: »

I hope every business in the UK & Europe jumps aboard this bandwagon.

Anything to highlight to politicians that the UK/ EU trading on WTO terms would represent a damaging failure on their part.

Indeed. Lets hope that the EU decides that punishing consumers isn't the way to go.

wotsthat

mrginge wrote: »

Indeed. Lets hope that the EU decides that punishing consumers isn't the way to go.

Good to know you've already analysed the outcome of future negotiations and, in the event of failure, determined where the blame will lie.

steampowered

There is an underlying assumption running throughout these threads that free trade is in the economic interests of each individual EU country.

That isn't necessarily true. Protectionism, tariffs and state aid can have a positive impact. The British empire relied on mercantilism (essentially the opposite of free trade) to run its trading arrangements for hundreds of years.

There is currently a global backlash against free trade treaties - you only have to see what the two presidential candidates in the US are talking about, or the issues around TTIP/CETA to see this.

I wouldn't be so sure that total free trade is in EU interests - perhaps as a whole but not in the context of individual countries looking at their individual industries who would need to approve anything more than a very basic deal.

cogito

Meanwhile the EU has decided to sticks its nose into the Nissan affair.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/06/european-commission-examine-terms-uk-deal-nissan

This is absolutely no business of the EU. There is no assistance required until the UK leaves the EU and only then to protect it if EU tariffs are
imposed.

No surprise that support for brexit is growing all the time as people see what the EU really is. These are only the outraged screams of a woman scorned.

wotsthat

cogito wrote: »

This is absolutely no business of the EU. There is no assistance required until the UK leaves the EU and only then to protect it if EU tariffs are imposed.

If the government are providing a brexit insurance policy then that could be construed as state aid. When (or if) that policy pays out is moot.

The government engaged in a successful obfuscation campaign to prevent anyone finding out the terms of the assurances so I doubt the EU are going to find out much anyway.

GreatApe

Conrad wrote: »

Talking rubbish again by only thinking the obvious. Look at the history of devaluation aside from numpty examples such as Zimbabwe.

You will find British sourcing and production picks up, and yes we can provision a great deal more of our need than we do.

You are also ignoring the hard currency we earn by selling more competitive services and goods abroad. This all makes us genuine wealth, not illlusory numpty wealth based on importing underpants and letting out houses

A lot of the stuff we import can not be substituted with location production.

For insistence you are not going to start producing iphones locally they are protected by trademark and copyrights. Nor are you going to start a generic tech manufacturing industry in the uk to start making generic phones not that there is a huge demand for that anyway. The phones alone are probably somewhere around 30 million units a year sale or some £10 billion in just smartphone imports you arent going to make locally.

The same applies to a lot of things, drug imports, software, film, music, and a lot of things are also brand dependent. Maybe we could produce some local conrad branded cars but are you going to go spend £10 billion on a conrad car factory to build it over 10 years to see if you can sell any? probably not. Not forgetting commodity imports which you cant just will local production into existence

Of course that is not to say no import can be displaced by local production but possibly 80-90% probably cant and even much of what can will take time (years) to actually build out the infrastructure to make them.