Daniel Hannan, in a speech to the House of Lords, wants to know why British citizens are being taxed extra when they buy tomatoes from Morocco.
Aside from having been a member of the European Parliament before Brexit, which he championed, Hannan is the president of the Institute for Free Trade. For all of protectionists’ talk about “strategic” tariffs on “critical” goods, actual protectionist measures currently on the books often make no sense and don’t even protect anything.
Hannan noted that the U.K. imports 80 percent of its tomatoes, and the largest source of those imports is Morocco. As anyone familiar with the weather in the U.K. will admit, the country isn’t very well-suited to growing tomatoes for much of the year.
“Yes, we do have a short tomato season here,” Hannan said. “The Isle of Wight used to be in my constituency when I was a euro MP. It runs roughly from June to September, and even then, we still have to import.”
Hannan continued: “The Moroccan growing season runs from October to April. So even from the most dunderheaded, Trumpy or Corbynite, protectionist point of view, whom do we imagine that we are protecting from those crimson globes coming from North Africa?”
He urged the government to repeal the tariffs and quotas on Moroccan tomatoes, not only to benefit British tomato-eaters, but also to prove that the U.K. views African countries as trading partners, not charity cases. To which I’d add, based on my recent interview with Senegalese entrepreneur Magatte Wade: If liberal democracies won’t do business with African countries, China and Russia will.
And if Trump gets his way with a 10 or 20 percent tariff on all imports, “all” very much includes fruits, vegetables, and other natural resources that Americans import because they do not exist on this continent, or are not plentiful enough to satisfy Americans’ wants and needs.
Give yourself four and a half minutes to watch Hannan’s whole speech:
