Quick! Quick! A justification for a bad policy, now please!

Placing import tariffs on intermediate goods - things which are then used to make other things - is a foolish policy. For it makes those intermediate goods more expensive for all users and manufacturers whoever is the producer. They raise the price of domestic production as well as imported.

Britain’s defence and nuclear industries are highly reliant on foreign steel, new figures show, as Boris Johnson considers whether to impose new tariffs on imports of the metal.

The UK is buying more than two-thirds of the steel needed for the two key industries from abroad, according to Government figures. The nuclear and defence industries spent £150m on the metal last year, of which just £45m came from British mills.

The disclosures come as Boris Johnson prepares to extend steel tariffs to protect the British industry. The Prime Minister has said the industry needs support as energy bills soar.

This looks like one of those things rolled out as a justification for such a bad policy. For we’re all expected to nod along. Ooooh, yes, isn’t it terrible that nuclear power plants, that the defence vital to the nation, is cheaper. Cheaper by being able to use steel that is cheaper than domestic production.

Two seconds thought of course leads to the opposite conclusion. We get more nuclear, more defence, for the same amount of money meaning that we are all positively anti the very idea of import tariffs on steel.

This before we get to the wider point, that such tariffs will make everything made with steel more expensive. Cars - just as one example - will be more expensive to manufacture in Britain as a result of making both nuclear and defence more expensive.

The only problem that tariffs on intermediate goods solves is the idea that we’re already too rich and therefore must make ourselves poorer. We can imagine the green part of the hair shirt brigade signing on to such a nonsense but what a Tory Government is doing proposing it escapes us. The aim of having a polity is that it enriches us after all.