I've posted several items from Brexit Central where obscure 'businessmen' write glowing articles about how their companies trade internationally on WTO terms without any bother at all. Some examples are HERE and HERE. I could have posted many more but now I see the contagion has spread to the letters page of The Daily Telegraph HERE.
This sort of stuff is greeted with approval by Brexiteers who don't do any exporting themselves. It reinforces the notion that leaving without a deal is painless and warnings to the opposite are simply scaremongering.
A John Kirby writes that he owns two companies, one in the UK and another in the USA which trade under WTO and have no problems apparently. I see also Dr North at EU Referendum also briefly mentions this letter on his post this morning.
Dr Kirby (for he is indeed a Dr as we shall see) writes:
SIR – I run and own two companies, one in the United States and one in Britain. We frequently ship products to and from countries all over the world under World Trade Organisation protocols, and experience no problems. The tariffs vary from zero to about 4 per cent.
We have to answer three questions. What the goods are; what we are charging for them; and what the country of origin is. It takes about two minutes to fill in the form on the internet when we book a shipment. All shipping agents provide this service. There are no delays.
I cannot understand why there is all this talk of chaos if we leave the EU without a deal.
John Kirby
Managing Director, Kirby Devon
Yealmpton, Devon
Impressed? Sounds good doesn't it? International entrepreneur of the kind we will be relying on post Brexit when foreign manufacturers decamp to the continent.
However, when I do ten minutes of research from my armchair I am afraid the truth is a bit disappointing.
Kirby Devon make tablet counters but the only website I can find is an American one (HERE) with products priced in US dollars. Manufacturing is done in the UK and the US but all international export (non EU/US) is done by the British company from Devon.
The website looks like it was designed by a six year old and in February 2018 the British end had total assets of £115,000 and in the previous twelve months had an average of three (yes this is not a typo - three) employees according to the latest accounts (HERE). Dr John Kirby, the letter writer, is listed as managing director and doubles as company secretary, as well as umpteen other things no doubt, including probably tea boy and HR.
Note they offer a 12 year warranty on these $2500 counters but carry only £5000 of stock. So, either the counters are fantastically reliable, they haven't got that many in the field or you have to wait while they knife and fork the parts together.
The company was founded in 1971, four years before Bill Gates started Microsoft, and by 2018 had grown to - err, three employees. It's not quite another Microsoft or Google is it?
Richard North focuses on the fact that we are in the EU and Kirby Devon enjoy frictionless trade inside the EU as well as the EU's free trade deals and numerous bilateral agreements to ease trade. Exporters like Kirby Devon will lose all this if we crash out at the end of March. However, I think this is only part of the story.
KD doesn't sell a lot anyway, it's not just-in-time manufacturing, uses few parts so Rules of Origin are easily determined, it isn't perishable goods and is not covered as far as I can see by any complex regulatory approvals like aircraft parts for example. So, even if some orders are exported under WTO terms they are really not too onerous.
It's just more straw clutching on the part of The Telegraph who obviously didn't do any research.
If the Telegraph's case to exit onto WTO terms was a good one there would be a a queue of high profile CEOs writing reassuringly in the letters pages of all the national newspapers - but there aren't. Instead we get Airbus, JLR, as well as the CBI, the EEF, the BCC and so on issuing dire warnings of the catastrophe of a no deal Brexit. But instead of The Telegraph amplifying the warnings, these captains of industry are vilified for trying to thwart the will of the people.
And Dr Kirby, with what looks more like a hobby than a business, is lined up to give 'balance' - otherwise known as obfuscating the truth.
