BREXIT - a different opinion (from Malta)

[Pete G]

As far as the main science initiatives go, most of the 'European' ones are subject to separate funding by member states and are not funded by the EU and more often than not contain several members who are not in the EU but are considered European geographically, or in terms of shared values and associations. CERN has Israel and Switzerland as full members for example, and Poland etc.'s membership predates their EU membership by more than 10 years. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that any of these relationships will be affected by Brexit.

Most of the directly EU funded stuff tends to focus on politics and the other humanities, and even if you ignore the fact that EU funding is just recycling a member states money back to it, and therefore there is no reason UK could not continue to fund it should it choose, the key here is 'should it choose' and since most of the social 'science' research is either deliberately designed to promote the EU or based on insane post-modernist theory, would losing it actually constitute a 'loss' in any real terms?

I believe Oxford's concerns are the exact inverse of the ones stated. They are worried that the lecturers and student that are members of other EU states will be put off by having to secure visa applications but given the fact that they successfully attract lecturers and students from non-EU members in large numbers [USA, India, Japan etc.] its hard to understand why

In the end lecturers and students will go where the best universities are and that is the US the UK and Japan mainly. The first non-UK EU university limps into the World Rankings at number 28, and UK has 3 of the top 10, so I don't think its actually an issue.

I think it is just special pleading from Oxford for special fast tracking for academic visas, and why would you not want to do that, its hardly the type of immigration the UK is trying to reduce

[Devil]

CERN has Israel and Switzerland as full members for example

CERN has nothing to do with the EU. It has been there since 1954, three years before the Treaty of Rome. As it is mostly in Switzerland, and was founded as an offshoot of EPFL/ETH in Lausanne and Zürich, it could hardly be anything but a member.

[Royal]

How will British goods fair in the UK if all tariffs are removed?

I'm not sure what you mean by this Dominic - are you saying that we impose tariffs on UK goods within the UK? I'm not sure that we actually do this, other than from VAT. Maybe I misunderstand you?

As far as Brexit is concerned, I believe that our best option would be to forgo 'membership' of the Single Market where we are bound by all the rules and regulations of the 'club' which do not favour the UK but benefit Germany and France the most. Why are Germany and France the net benefactors? Because German manufacturing outstrips any other EU country and the French farmers receive up to 30% subsidies through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for inefficient farming methods. By comparison, UK employment in manufacturing when we joined the EU was 35%. It is now 8%. Other than Morgan, we don't even have a British owned car manufacturer any longer. Jaguar and Land Rover are now owned by Tata (India), Lotus by Malaysia, MG by China and both Vauxhall and Aston Martin by the USA.

The current Single Market rules also (perversely) REQUIRES the free movement of labour. Why? Can anyone explain the logic behind this sacrosanct 'freedom' which the Eurocrats will not budge on? I certainly can't work it out, so I would welcome someone who is able to explain it in simple terms that this simple mind can understand.

Post Brexit, we will obviously still have 'access' to the Single Market in the same way that every other country does - that will not change. However, we are currently paying more for goods from within the EU than we would on the world market - that's where the tariffs come in. Ideally, in a free market there should be no tariffs at all, and each country should trade at global rates. In this scenario, if you make a good product at competitive rates, others will buy it. If your product is shoddy or too expensive then it will not do well in a global market. Each country will have an area in which it excels and therefore concentrates. In our case, it's financial services (banking, investment, insurance etc), pharmaceuticals and high end manufactured goods. However, because of EU protectionism, trade barriers are imposed on EU goods of up to 20% in order to ensure high prices for EU manufacturers as opposed to buying from the global market which tends to be cheaper in most areas of raw materials, agriculture and manufacturing. We would thrive in a truly free market. The only ones that ultimately pay for tariffs are consumers. That's why joining the EU pushed up prices for every member country.

[Dominic]

No, I mean, if we remove tariffs, Britain will be exposed to a flood of cheap imports. How will British goods compete?

[Pete G]

Interestingly [and just to amplify Royal's point] you can see this in action, actually using empirical data.

On 1st Jan 2016, a free trade agreement came into force between the Ukraine and the EU [interestingly without committing to any of the four pillars], replacing the old agreement [i.e. WTO standard tariffs], the relaxation actually had virtually no effect at all on the desirability of Ukrainian goods in the EU [they increased exports by 1.9%] whereas the EU took the opportunity to flood the Ukraine market with cheaper tariff free goods, increasing their total exports by 17% in the same period. Because of this the balance of payments deficit for the Ukraine wrt the EU went from E1.2bn to E3.4bn, an increase of 2.2bn, or nearly 200%

And now there is nothing the Ukraine can do, except either accept an ever increasing balance of trading deficit, or completely change their manufacturing profile to fit the new environment [for which of course they will need to borrow heavily]. There are no tariff levers left for them to pull to correct.

And they thought Russia was their biggest problem

[Jim B]

As far as the main science initiatives go, most of the 'European' ones are subject to separate funding by member states and are not funded by the EU and more often than not contain several members who are not in the EU but are considered European geographically, or in terms of shared values and associations. CERN has Israel and Switzerland as full members for example, and Poland etc.'s membership predates their EU membership by more than 10 years. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that any of these relationships will be affected by Brexit.....

https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/ ... countries/

I believe this counters your argument regarding funding of Science initiatives by the EU.

Jim

[Pete G]

I believe this counters your argument regarding funding of Science initiatives by the EU.

Jim

And yet this bit, from exactly the same report, appears to endorse it . Weird eh?

https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/ ... ft-the-EU/

I think they are a little confused about the difference between European money, and EU money [its an easy mistake to make, especially if it favours your point]

[Royal]

No, I mean, if we remove tariffs, Britain will be exposed to a flood of cheap imports. How will British goods compete?

Ah, OK, understood!

The ones who are currently paying for tariffs on imports to the UK, of course, are the British consumers, so generally speaking, cheaper imports to the UK must be a good thing for the welfare of our people, surely?

Of course, things are never that simple, especially if the imports are in direct competition with domestic products which will in turn ensure employment in the domestic market. However, in simple terms, if the UK produces a widget for 50 pence and China produces the same widget for 48 pence, than the consumer (assuming that the widgets are of similar quality and have the same life span) has the choice of supporting the home product (ie "Buy British") or paying less for the Chinese product. If the majority of consumers went for the Chinese product, then the UK product needs to either cut costs, improve productivity or go to the wall - it is after all a competitive consumer led market and only the strong deserve to survive.

This is where the EU protectionism comes in and tariffs are imposed on (for example) the Chinese product so that it ends up costing 52 pence falsely making the EU product appear to be better value. This ultimately hurts the consumer and instead rewards the non competitive company. As I said in a previous post, if a country produces a good quality product at a competitive price, then it will do well in a global market.

There is a (minor) danger of course that a country like China could 'dump' artificially cheap goods into the UK domestic market at a price designed to put a specific domestic product out of business prior to an increase in price to an inflated level. This happened recently with steel. However, there is a danger that such a policy could bankrupt the aggressor, as the cheap import could be just turned around and sold to another country at a more competitive price.

In the UK, our strengths are in financial products, pharmaceuticals and high end manufactured goods. If we concentrate on these and ensure that we are competitive, cheap imports will not affect us. However, if the cheap imports are things that we do not or cannot produce ourselves, then that has to be a good thing, surely?

[Dominic]

And what about the farmers, and the manufacturers of lower end manufactured goods? I used to be the I.T Manager for a firm that made fittings for the hydro-electric industry, including timers, hoses, and allsorts. They weren't a huge firm but had over 150 employees. Those employees can't all go into financial products.

[Royal]

Okay. - a simple question: Do you therefore support protectionism and tariffs?