Policy Focus # 5: How the BNP would return us to an era of rationing

The BNP would ensure the “protection of British companies from unfair foreign imports” (source).

The BNP believes that in order to rebuild our manufacturing base British industries need to be protected in a similar style to that employed by East Asian countries such as Japan or South Korea. In the past, such countries have used a variety of tactics including tariffs, quotas, special tax arrangements, cheap loans, and currency undervaluation. By limiting the number of imports and raising their prices, they believe they can give British companies a captive market.

Remember, the effect a BNP system of tariffs could cost us each an extra £1,300 a year.

The non financial effects of their protectionist measures are even worse:-

- They reduce diversity and choice. Today, we can wear clothes made by Milanese designers, drink wine from the valleys of New Zealand, or use computers made in Tokyo to access websites designed by Indians in California. It’s difficult to put absolute numbers on the value of this, but a recent fair estimate by Broda and Weinstein estimated the U.S. welfare gain from a greater variety of imports could be as much as much as 2.6% of GDP, or $1,000 each a year.

- Quotas create rationing and waiting lists. As well as tariffs, another mainstay tool of protectionist policy are quotas. The BNP might not block the entry of the new iPad to Britain entirely, but you’d have to be in the lucky first 1,000 people on a waiting list to get one. More crucially, there would be these waiting lists for items in every area of our life – from pairs of jeans to the latest medicine.

- They lose money from the British economy. While tariffs at least raise some money which could be used to cut taxes elsewhere, quotas don’t raise any money – at least for our government. What they do do is create an artificial scarcity which raises prices, but that extra profit goes straight into the pocket of overseas producers.

- They’d kick off a trade war. Once Britain unitarily imposed a system tariffs and quotas, it would not take long for other countries to respond in kind, or the WTO to chuck us out. British goods would be blocked from going overseas, leaving our manufacturing industry no better off than it was before and all of us worse off.

- They’d inspire corruption. The inevitable result of rationing is black markets being formed. Decent, honest Britons would lose out, while the corrupt and wealthy paid through the nose to to keep on their old lives.

- They take away consumer choice. In today’s economy, we as informed consumers increasingly expect to be in control. Rather than being what told to do by big government or by big corporations, we want to choose what we want and when. In the internet long tail age, our niche interests and tastes traverse the whole globe. We don’t want to wait six months after America for the latest Hollywood blockbuster or Sony gadget.

International trade and the variety of goods it brings make our daily life more vibrant and dynamic. The BNP’s plan would return us to a dull, grey world, where we all consumed the same brands, wore the same clothes and drove the same cars. They’d increase the corruption and jealousy in British society as people fought to get their fair share. They’d take away our choice, limit our freedom and make Britain a more boring place to live.