Farage, Trump and Brexit five years on

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the UK formally exiting the EU. Five years in which almost everything has gone downhill. Trade has fallen, businesses are drowning in red tape, living standards have stagnated and access to the health service is worse than it has been probably in my lifetime. Of course Covid didn’t help but while we seem to have recovered from that reasonably well, Brexit is set to be a drag on the economy for decades, perhaps permanently, unless we rejoin. A lot of people have covered the anniversary already so there isn’t a lot to add.

The BBC had a couple of items. One covered the five key impacts of Brexit, none of them positive, but another looked at how two firms in Norfolk had been affected. The first was a shellfish processing company whose owner had voted for Brexit but now has "many regrets, most weeks" and says "Brexit has done me no favours and it definitely hasn't benefitted my industry." .

I assume the reporter struggled to get any sort of BBC balance but they did find one firm which was unequivocal. Brexit had been a success.

Rachael Waring is the co-owner of a furniture manufacturer that makes products for the hospitality trade and employs about 60 people in Larling, a village just north of Thetford on the A11. A fervent Brexit supporter and campaigner, she says: "It has been a success for both me as a citizen and definitely for my company," adding:

"I am happy that the Treasury has more money to play with because we have needed that additional money as a country, especially when Covid came around the corner, and for the country I think it is good for us to be in charge of our own destiny and more of a global player."

Ms Waring obviously doesn't read the news. The Treasury certainly doesn't have more money. The OBR say we are on the road to £40 billion a year in LOST revenue. But the really stunning stuff is the biggest reason she likes Brexit is that it has made it harder for her European competitors to supply her UK customers: "We have had additional turnover as a result of that. That is a genuine Brexit benefit."

This is nothing less than the very 'protectionism' that we were told the EU were guilty of and the reason why we should quit the bloc!!  Amazing.  Global player my a**e.

Farage

Farage held a rally for Reform to celebrate the damage he has helped to inflict on us all through Brexit. He praised Donald Trump and Elon Musk (even though Musk says he should step down as leader) which I think will very soon prove his undoing. Trump is wrecking the USA and is already extremely unpalatable to UK voters and this will only get worse.

His ‘performance’ at the rally was a copy of Trump at his worst, with Farage delivering what was no more than a rant about all that’s wrong at the moment, something any of us could do quite easily. The problem is finding workable solutions, and implementing them.

He said that ‘we’ need people who believe in Brexit and claimed that even Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, joint leaders of Vote Leave, didn’t really ‘believe’ in it. He claims he and his cohort of 'fruitcakes', 'loonies' and 'closet racists' are the only ones who can do it.  

Just think about that for a moment. Brexit is a policy so special, so unique that only he can implement it properly. Up to now, as everyone knows, including Farage and his audience, everyone who has tried has failed miserably. What kind of a policy is it that only one man (him) can make a success of? It’s like being sold a car and being told only one man in England can make it work. Would you buy? Of course not, or you’d think very hard before you did.  

Not just that, but he has no record that would show he has the slightest ability to run a cabinet or a department or build anything serious at all.  What happens if he can’t make Brexit work or if he passes away suddenly?

Farage never proposes anything in detail except deploying royal naval gunboats in The Channel to stop the boats and signing a trade deal with the USA under Trump. We wouldn’t need to deploy boats at all if we were in the EU and able to return asylum seekers to France. As for a US trade deal, well let's have a look at that. 

Trump tariffs

Yesterday Trump announced he is imposing a 25% tariff on imports into the United States from Canada and Mexico, its two biggest trading partners, and 10% on goods coming in from China, starting from this morning!. He still thinks the tariffs are going to be paid by these countries and not American importers. The Dow Jones stock market index immediately fell. I assume Canada and Mexico will reciprocate and we will see the start of a trade war in which there will be no winners.

This is the second time he has unilaterally reneged on the NAFTA trade deal and this time he has actually torpedoed a deal he himself negotiated because he didn’t like the original.  As the economist Paul Krugman writes, a trade deal with Trump "isn’t worth the paper it was printed on — that he can impose high tariffs on the other signatories whenever he feels like it."

The reasons for the sanctions are not always clear and may not even be legal. Sometimes Trump says it's because other countries are 'exploiting' the USA, sometimes immigration and sometimes drug smuggling (Fentanyl in this case) But Canada isn’t even a major source of fentanyl. As Krugman says:  

"It’s just a plausible-sounding reason for a president to do what he wanted to do for other reasons — George W. Bush wanted a splendid little war, Donald Trump just wants to impose tariffs and assert dominance."

The US president has a lot of power over trade and can impose tariffs but not willy-nilly. Congress allows him (or her) to do so in response to economic injury from import surges, national security, unfair foreign competition or dumping — selling below costs. Drug smuggling, especially imaginary drug smuggling, isn’t on the list.

National emergency is another reason but with 2.6% inflation and 4.1% unemployment that's hardly a good basis for that argument. No, Trump is doing it because he can and that is the partner Farage would like the UK to have.

And note that even Trump's supporters in the Senate are starting to worry. Susan Collins is a Republican senator from Maine, right on the US - Canadian border, close to Quebec and Montreal. Read her Twitter post: 

The Maine economy is integrated with Canada, our most important trading partner. Certain tariffs will impose a significant burden on many families, manufacturers, the forest products industry, small businesses, lobstermen, and agricultural producers.

For example, 95 percent of…

— Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) January 31, 2025

She supported Trump. What did she think he was going to do?  He has talked about imposimg tariffs for months. What a stupid person.