Douglas Carswell

Don't fall for the fearmongering: Leaving the EU won't mean punitive tariffs

Project Fear has gone into overdrive over the last week. Officials, pundits, and pressure groups – some of whom have curious connections to the EU payroll - have been making out that Brexit is a leap into the unknown, as if Britain has never been an independent, sovereign, trading nation before.

Here's the problem with the scaremongering: it's nonsense.

British Eurosceptics have consistently called for a post-Brexit relationship with the EU based on free trade and friendly cooperation. Given that we buy much more from the EU than we sell, they have every incentive to negotiate a trade agreement with us.

"But what if they don't?" You may ask. "What if they want to raise trade barriers against Britain to teach us a lesson? What happens in the worst case scenario?"

The truth that the BSE campaign won't admit is that the EU couldn't raise punitive barriers against British goods even if it wanted to. Britain post-Brexit would resume her seat on the World Trade Organisation, and WTO rules prevent members raising discriminatory tariffs or non-trade barriers against each other.

In its detailed report on Brexit, Business for Britain calculated the average rate of export tariffs without a new UK-EU deal at 4.4%. That would cost us £7.4 billion per year – almost £4 billion less than our current annual net contribution to the EU.

"Ah," you object. "But they're Eurosceptics. They're biased."

Okay; well listen to what the House of Commons Library researchers said in their report on Brexit this year:

"The maximum tariff would be that applied to the MFN [Most Favoured Nation]. The EU's MFN tariff has generally fallen over time, meaning that in this particular context the 'advantage' of membership has declined. In 2012, the EU's MFN tariff was 2.6%."

2.6%! Just over half the worst-case-scenario rate forecast by Business for Britain. Hardly crippling.

Of course, looking at our trade with Europe only tells a fraction of the story anyway. Europe is a shrinking market - and a rapidly declining destination for British goods. As a proportion of our total exports, we sold less to the EU in 2014 than ever before – despite the EU holding us back in the global marketplace. Post-Brexit, we would have the freedom to negotiate our own trade agreements with non-EU countries: think what that would do for our exports.

Succeeding in the 21st-century global economy means adapting how we do business to new circumstances. We know what we would get if we stay in the EU: Jean-Claude Juncker's managed decline. We also know that leaving will bring us new opportunities – we just don't know quite how many. Let's vote leave, take control - and find out!

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