We must dig up Cornwall to meet local content rules
Further evidence of the European Union - in common with all too many politicians - not understanding the point of trade.
UK carmakers face a three-year scramble to source electric car batteries locally or from the EU to avoid tariffs on exports following the Brexit free trade deal, according to industry analysts.
The Christmas Eve deal means that all UK-EU trade in cars and parts will continue to be free of tariffs or quotas after the the Brexit transition period ended on Friday, as long as they contain enough content from either UK or EU factories. The deal came as a major relief to the embattled car industry.
Batteries will at first be allowed to contain up to 70% of materials from countries outside the EU or the UK. However, from 1 January 2024 that requirement will tighten to 50%. This will mean that sourcing battery materials from within the UK or EU will be the only realistic option for UK carmakers to avoid EU tariffs from 2024 onwards, according to Alessandro Marongiu, a trade analyst at the lobby group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
The major material need for these batteries is lithium, with a substantial addition by value of cobalt. There are no mining operations in the UK for either material. Cornwall has some possibilities for lithium but that’s something to be worked upon. There’s no substantial (a very marginal operation exists in Portugal) lithium source in Europe at all. Although, obviously, more mountains can be blown up to provide one.
Global supply comes from either Australia, areas too desolate even for wombats let alone kangaroos, or salt flats in Chile and Argentina, places too desolate for any form of life. A further substantial amount is known, at high altitude, in Bolivia in again a salt flat carrying near no life of any kind.
But because people have the wrong view of trade the imperative is going to be to mine Cornwall and such other marginal European deposits while ignoring - actually, positively insisting they not be used - the cornucopian deposits elsewhere in the world.The ignorance being of the very point of trade itself, the gain being that we have access to those things done better and or cheaper by Johnny Foreigner.
As it happens the engineer The Man got in to place mineral deposits around the place didn’t place them here. So, we should go get the stuff from elsewhere. This being exactly what these local content laws insist we do not do.
That is, in order to have tariff free trade we’ve got to ignore the point of having trade at all. Only politics could make such a clusterscrum out of a simple concept.
If we want lithium batteries then we should get that lithium from wherever it is easiest or cheapest to do so. Why burden ourselves with a law insisting upon exactly the opposite?