In a continued attempt to show the relevance and justification for Brexit, its advocates are having to clutch at ever thinner straws. So it is with Guido Fawkes, the right-wing political website published by British-Irish blogger Paul De Laire Staines and variously described as “a cross between a comic and a propaganda machine” (Ann Perkins in The Guardian) and “the dung on the rosebush of politics” (Boris Johnson). Staines is avowedly pro-Brexit but retains his own EU citizenship through being part Irish.
Staines’ trumpeted that, “According to Americans for Tax Reform, Britain is the most improved country on the 2021 International Trade Barrier Index.” We have apparently jumped from 8th to 4th place since 2019, most of it by negotiating and signing over 60 continuity or bridging agreements include with the EU and “a substantial agreement with Japan that added a forward looking digital chapter absent from the EU-Japan agreement.”
The event itself was hosted at The Taxpayer’s Alliance by Victoria Hewitson, head of regulatory affairs at the IEA. She was able to use the TPA because they share a well-known office at 55, Tufton Street, Westminster, home to various Brexit supporting and climate change denying groups.
Let me say I have no idea if the methodology used to compile the index is reliable or accurate but the reason for drawing attention to it is the rather unfortunate timing of its launch. Why? Because of two things.
Firstly, the Food and Drink Federation released figures showing exports for the first half of 2021 were down. UK food exports were down 4.5% in H1 2021 compared to H1 (the first half of) 2020, and 17.3% when compared to pre-COVID levels of H1 2019.
"The new trading relationship with the EU, resulted in a drop in EU exports of 15.9% in H1 when compared to H1 2020, and 27.4% compared to H1 2019. Exports to the Republic of Ireland, our biggest export market, fell significantly with a loss of 22% compared to 2020, and 27% compared to pre-COVID data - a loss of more than £0.5bn."
But listen to this, "Exports to China were up more than a quarter compared to 2020, with increased sales of nearly £100m. However, the loss of sales to Germany, Spain and Italy of around a third, resulted in lost exports totalling £445m in the past year."
There has been no change at all in our trading relationship with China yet exports increased a lot. It was one of the few non-EU countries where imports from the UK increased. Out of our top 20 markets, only three increased, (Canada and Norway were the other two) while 17 decreased.
Moving up the Trade Barriers Index hasn't done us much good has it?
Next, Emily Thornberry, Foreign affairs spokesperson, in the House of Commons has been trying to get details of the UK-Japan trade deal mentioned in the TBI report and much lauded by Liz Truss when she was trade secretary. Thornberry has been trying to get a comparison between Truss' new deal and the EU one signed in 2018, without success:
A year ago today, Liz Truss signed a post-Brexit trade deal with Japan, and subsequently told Parliament it delivered ‘higher’ benefits than our previous deal via the EU. Now I can reveal her officials advised her on how to correct that false claim, something she never did. (1/5)
— Emily Thornberry (@EmilyThornberry) October 23, 2021
If you read the Twitter thread, you will see that the government has proclaimed trade will increase by £2.6 billion and GDP by £1.5 billion - hardly worth bothering with really but in fact a 2018 UK government assessment showed the EU deal was worth £4.3 and £2.6 billion respectively. In other words we are worse off with the new deal. The TBI report says Truss' deal was "a substantial agreement" that added a "forward looking digital chapter absent from the EU-Japan agreement." But its impact on the UK was negative!!
The IEA has a bit of a dodgy reputation itself for its pro-Brexit leaning and opaque funding so we perhaps shouldn't be surprised, but at least it has a website. The mysterious Tholos Foundation does not appear to have even that, at least not one that Google was able to find.
And the launch must have been pretty low key affair because I can't find a reference to the launch either on the IEA website or the TPA website, both lacking any search facility. Perhaps it was out of embarrassment?
The foreword to the TBI reports is written by Daniel Griswold, a Senior affiliated scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in the US, hardly an Ivy league institution. The mysterious Tholos Foundation is said to have a sister index - the International Property Rights Index (IPRI )- published by the Property Rights Alliance.
The odd things is that the 2019 edition of the index was published by the Washington International Trade Association. What happened to them we don't know.
If I look on the News section of the Property Rights Alliance (PRA) website I can see their Twitter feed is shown with their most recent tweets. Most are about the TB Index. Apart from their own, the only other international publication to mention the index is Guido Fawkes!!!
The PRA also list the IEA among their "collaborators."
And where the 'Americans for Tax Reform' mentioned by Staines fits in is anybody's guess.
You can see how it all works. Something apparently vaguely positive about Brexit is cobbled together in order to provide a semblance of respectability and apparent authority to give a headline that Brexiteers use to gaslight leave voters which is then parroted back to the originator as if it is an endorsement.
Incidentally, the World Bank has a section on its website about trade barriers so why they need to have another index anyway is a bit of a puzzle - until you think about it
This is all about cutting taxes, while calling for more growth in the future (which never comes) from tax cuts, to pay for desperately needed infrastructure. The present issue with sewage is only the most recent example of a lack of investment in important stuff. We have cut gas storage to the bone, are in the process of halving oil storage. We have worse infrastructure, less resilience, lower productivity with more uncertainty and higher risks than most other European countries and we still have people like the IEA wanting more tax cuts.
It is crazy.
