Patrick Minford and going bananas about trade

At the heart of Patrick Minford’s analysis of Brexit is the very Smithian observation that it’s the imports part of trade which makes us rich. This is derived from Smith’s point that consumption is the purpose of all production. If we get to consume more, more cheaply, then we are richer - more consumption, cheaper, being what buying from the most efficient global producers allows us to do. It’s imports that make us rich.

Therefore now that we have the freedom to set our own trade rules again we should simply state that we are free traders. As with the Britain of 1846. We will impose no trade barriers to anything from anywhere, no quotas, no tariffs, only the same product consistency and safety laws that we apply to domestic production.

Then things go bananas:

Bananas could be more expensive in Northern Ireland than the rest of the UK when a deal is struck on the Protocol, Brexiteers have warned.

The Government is considering slashing UK tariffs on bananas from Peru, Colombia and Ecuador next year, which will make them cheaper.

But Brussels could insist that bananas sent to Northern Ireland from Great Britain pay a higher EU tariff if it deems them at risk of crossing into the Republic.

Now, what the EU insists upon for Northern Ireland is another matter. The question is why do we have any tariffs upon Peru, Ecuador and Colombia at all? Further, why in heck did we raise them upon Brexit?

Banana importers, distributors and retailers in the UK face a period of major uncertainty after it was confirmed that, in the event of a no-deal Brexit where continuity agreements have not yet been signed with key Latin American suppliers, the UK will lift its banana import tariff rate to €114 per tonne.

We don’t need a free trade agreement to not make ourselves poorer in that manner. Just insist that we’re not going to tax ourselves on our consumption of that waxy yellowness. There, we’re done. Instead we have this sort of silliness:

The UK has a standard tariff of 12 per cent on all imported goods which are not covered by trade agreements.

This means that products like oranges and bananas are hit with a tax of 12 per cent even though there are no orange or banana farmers in the UK to protect.

We just don’t need trade agreements in order to not make ourselves poorer. The imports are the thing we desire, the imports are what make us richer, why are we putting barriers in the way of us getting what we want? After all, the entire point of Brexit is that this is all now, again, under our own control.

We do now have the political power to abolish all tariffs and quotas upon imports. We should do so, obviously, anything else is just bananas.