If Starmer were to rejoin the EU tomorrow, arch-Remainer Gavin Esler tweeted the other day, what benefits of Brexit would you miss most? I’ve got one for him: affordable cars.
Britain, even under a more EU-friendly Labour government, has declined to copy the EU – as well as the US – in imposing punitive tariffs on imports of Chinese-made electric cars.
For some manufacturers the new EU tariffs will reach 37.6 per cent, which together with the existing 10 per cent tariff will bring it close to 50 per cent.
Britain, critics will say, will now become a target for ‘dumping’. That is another way of saying that UK motorists are about to enjoy a cornucopia of affordable electric cars – something which European manufacturers have failed completely to engineer. Indeed, they have dropped the cheaper models like the Ford Fiesta and Volkswagen Polo, which have no electric equivalents, in favour of pricey and ungainly SUVs, trying to rely on finance deals to push them at motorists who can’t really afford them.
True, the UK government, like the EU, has undermined the car market with over-ambitious targets for electric cars. Britain’s zero emission vehicle mandate (ZEV), which demands that manufacturers ensure 22 per cent of cars they sell this year are pure electric (rising to 80 per cent by 2030) is hugely damaging to the car industry. What the government now plans to do – to allow the market to supply a source of electricity cars to compete with petrol models – is a far better approach.
Will cheap Chinese cars hurt UK manufacturers? No doubt they will be at the lower end of the market. But then Britain hasn’t had much of a native mass car industry for the past two decades. What we do have are some luxury carmakers who rely on the growing Chinese market. They are now going to be allowed to carry on selling their vehicles without being hit with retaliatory tariffs, thus gaining an advantage over EU makers. It is no wonder that Volkswagen was one of the most vociferous opponents of the new EU tariffs.
Opponents of cheap Chinese cars have resorted to the issue of security. It is true that Chinese-made goods have the potential to be loaded with spyware providing data for the Chinese government. It was for that reason that the UK government belatedly decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to allow Chinese made components in our 5G network, while Chinese-made cameras are also being removed from our CCTV networks. But there is a common sense test to be performed here. No, it wouldn’t be a good idea to ferry government ministers and top military brass around in Chinese made cars, but is Xi Jinping really going to gain much from tracking Mrs Jones down to the shops?
There have been other benefits of Brexit, such as the ability of UK technologists to develop gene-editing of crops without being squashed by the EU precautionary principle, as GM crops were 25 years ago. But here is a tangible benefit of Brexit which everyone can understand. There may be many more to come.
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