The best thing the UK could do is welcome a Trump tariff by asking him to make it as high as possible. And simultaneously abolish the UK's own tariff to zero even more quickly if possible.
The first nation which recognises this is the first nation which will climb higher in the biggest way. Not to mention putting it in a position to solve many many seemingly unsolvable problems. This nation would not even have to sort out taxation, welfare and immigration though that would help too. It just would not help as much as abolishing the tariff and asking for all other nations to maximise their own tariff to the hilt.
Immediately things for the UK will improve.
Any tariff the US imposes will harm the US domestically first and in the biggest way, diminishing their competitiveness compared to the UK and giving our home industry a significant competitive advantage in the morning.
And it cost nothing, except a bit of intelligence. Abolish our own tariff. Ask our foreign competitors to maximise theirs.
The chief problem with the tariff, is that everyone believes in protectionism. Or mercantilism. Also known when adopted as national policy as 'Autarky'. Where the domestic economy is geared toward providing everything it needs, internally. Its not entirely clear why this is but I believe it revolves around the primordial false idea that land is the same thing as capital and money is the same thing as wealth. Any nation who takes up the alternative I propose above and succeeds are likely to bring a new dawn to civilisation. Because the idea is authentically innovative. It goes to the root and breaks free from a conditioned narrative possessing the collective of all other nations presently.
But these two false ideas have become set in national stone over the ages, so much so, that all citizens and their proxy leadership are effectively programmed by the ideas. This makes it exceptionally difficult to get a hearing on the sensible alternative possibilities such as the one I mention above. A sensible dialogue on the matter has become impenetrable for the collective psyche.
So much so that in our conditioning, we believe that getting a bigger stock of money(foreign exchange) is better than getting more of the things which money pays for. This inevitably leads to a deeper neurosis that when there is no more money to get or the foreign debt reaches unsustainable heights, the only alternative is to conquer the foreign competitors land, either directly in the old way, or foolishly by imposing a tariff to do the same thing without using human flesh directly.
Alas, the outcome is always a paradox for a foolish tariff seeker though - eventually the foreign nation will make a 'silent invasion' themselves by buying up the home nations land value and collecting its rent as a tribute from afar. This is all the foreigner can now do since domestic goods have been rendered worse quality and more expensive relatively by the tariff. All thats left to spend the foreign currency on is the most valuable land. And we're starting to see this going on before our eyes. America is trying to block it by banning the sale of land to foreign buyers. But this is also more foolishness.
Land value is embedded everywhere, especially in monopoly corporations which are being snapped up fast. Water flows to its lowest level and only God can stop it doing so. The rental value of an entire nation will power its way through to the highest bidder like a train, and no government can stop this short of killing all its own citizens, which has been tried in the past as history testifies to very well indeed.
The stupid general idea being that a tariff protects the domestic industry. But all it does is raise prices in the end. Because all wealth has value in exchange and money is not wealth. So even the specific industry being 'protected' by a tariff, must now pay more for domestic goods than it used to thus raising its own costs and prices to sell at.
In the end there are a billion exchanges going on continuously in every economy daily. So the devastating externalised costs of the tariff will always be socialised across every industry including the dumb one which spent so much of its outputs on lobbying for protection from foreign, and now home, competition. Instead of spending it wisely on wages, salaries, its own further capital formation and stock holders to incentivise yet further gains.
A much better policy if we insist on going down this hallowed tariff road, would be thus:
1) to sink all ships bringing goods this nation dearly wants for both consumption and our own capital formation, as they approach port
2) and likewise sink all ships in the process of exporting domestic goods, that we must use to pay for the imports, as they leave port. (exports by nature must be used to buy imports because the foreign imports are worth more to us than the domestic exports, in a win win exchange, unless the state, yet again, stands in the way of that, which is quite likely)
The Royal Navy is an ideal tool for this.
This obviously sounds daft but I use an extreme case to make the general case float up to the surface at last from the deep. And though daft, it's still less daft than using a tariff to block trade. Because the tariff is an even MORE costly way of sending wealth to the deep for no apparent reason than either killing the citizens creating the wealth of forcing them to stay at home rather than produce. Both these activities happen periodically throughout history - the state does it, backed fully by the people who eventually suffer form the stupidity.
Foreign trade exchanges are not paid for with money, dollars or gold blah blah, in the end. Foreign imports must always be paid for with domestic exports. In the form of economic wealth - goods and services that actually exist and have inputs of labour and prior capital. Money is not capital it is only a short term proxy for it. (it has great utility of course but it is not wealth) There are no exceptions to this in the final analysis. Economics 101.
The first nation which recognises this is the first nation which will climb higher in the biggest way. This policy will not solve all problems. But it will put the home nation in a position to make it that much easier to solve many previously unsolvable problems.
All it needs is an intelligent and bold leadership. Which I'm afraid are few and far between today. All is not lost. An authentic leader always springs up in the end and changes the world.
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