Biofools

EU Referendum has a nice post up about the way in which the EU biodiesel market is being upset by imports of heavily subsidised US production. It's worth reading it in full as the details are slightly mind-boggling. Their conclusion:

One can only stand and gaze in awe at the monumental insanity of a scheme which uses taxpayers money to subsidise already subsidised imports, to such an extent that domestic production is damaged. There must be a name for the people responsible – how about biofools?

Well, yes, I can see their point. But there's an even larger error here. The proposed EU solution is that there will be some sort of restriction upon such US imports. Something which is, unfortunately, exactly the wrong thing to do.

Think about what is going on here. EU taxpayers are subsidising the production of biodiesel for EU consumers to use. This may or may not be a silly idea but that is what is happening. The other thing that is happening is that US taxpayers are subsidising the production of biodiesel for EU consumers to use. That's clearly an insane idea but it is what is happening.

At this point the rational thing to do is stop the EU subsidy (so that EU taxpayers are not having to cough up) and import as much as we can from the US. After all, we're getting the benefit of the cheap fuel without having to pay the subsidy. Something of a result, no?

That exactly the opposite will happen, that we'll reject foreigners giving us money in order to insist on taxing ourselves more shows how entirely moronic the current thinking about trade is.

I mean, seriously, here's a bunch of septics offering us suitcases of free money and we're going to turn them away?

How did we end up being ruled by idiots?