Posted on 10/14/2019 7:26:01 AM PDT by Cronos
I suggest partial tariff equalization on the goods most likely to duck Irish Republic tariffs:
EU-wide tariff rates shall be levied by the UK on tires not for motor vehicle manufacture and on furniture, rugs, major purchase home appliances, alcoholic beverages above 6% alcohol content, tobacco products, electrical/plumbing fixtures and consumer photo/electronic goods designated by the EU Parliament at least 50 days beforehand. Goods having major tangible value-added content from countries created from former colonial possessions of Great Britain may be exempted by the UK, except when destined for any part of Ireland.
The Irish should be asked to identify the HMRC TARIC tariff codes of the items that they think are likely to avoid Irish Republic tariffs. The EU Parliament would be the final arbiter.
No sane Irish politician would dare spend tens of millions of Euros annually on border security to avoid a tariff loss far less than one million Euros.
It would be possible to partially or even fully rebate equalized UK tariffs via UK income tax credits to many UK income tax filers. A Brit might have to input their personal HMRC tariff rebate code when say buying EU Parliament specified equalized tariff items online.
I suggest, given Irish phytosanitary concerns:
Irish Republic general law and all appropriate IR/UK/EU emergency regulations proclaimed in English shall apply in Northern Ireland in purely technical agricultural matters (prior to the retail store/industrial level), until the first day of January at least 90 days after the legislature of Northern Ireland legislates otherwise.
The farmers of Northern Ireland and the government will play along as long as the Irish Republic and EU are reasonable because the farmers don’t want to solely have to deal with UK supermarket chains. The EU and Irish Republic will understand that they must be reasonable to avoid NI legislative pullout.
It should be for all NI businesses outside of agriculture to decide if they merely want to comply with UK law, or also comply with EU law and sell to the EU.
Non-agricultural businesses in Belfast should have fundamentally the same business legal environment as those in England.
Ireland has some agricultural concerns with respect to NI, but there has been no claim that English farmers won’t be able to realistically sell to the EU.
Northern Ireland is a tinderbox. If you piss off one community too much the whole province goes up in flames, and Britain will get the blame from everyone, including the US with its sizable Irish American population. Northern Ireland already had special treatment from its inception by having its own ‘Home Rule’ assembly since it was first created. A fudge is neccessary so that the Unionists feel that their right to remain British is respected, but the Nationalists get to feel that they are part of the wider Irish nation. That is why there has been peace in Northern Ireland all this time. The NI Unionists might get a bit upset that they’re ending up in the Irish common customs union but when they see they’ll still have the Queen on the money and the Union Jack still flying over Stormont they’ll get over it, as long as someone doesn’t try to change the status quo further to the point they are forced to join the Republic of Ireland and be ruled from Dublin.
I read that Irish Republic tariff revenue is around 350 million Euros annually.
I believe that in the UK duty on cars is paid when the car is registered and that’s probably the case in the Irish Republic too.
Dubliners aren’t going to spend 20 Euros on gasoline and drive to Northern Ireland and back merely to save two pounds on low-priced tariffed goods.
Irish corporate tax shenanigans have undermined the corporate tax systems of the Western World. The Irish have lots of gall to make a fuss over tariff equalization.
I believe that I read that Northern Ireland hasn’t had a working legislature since 2017.
Things aren’t politically peachy there.
No, but at least they aren’t kicking off, and both sides seem to understand that they only have themselves to blame for that particular predicament, not the people of Great Britain or the UK government. If we forced NI outside the UK without consulting the people of NI first, they WOULD blame us, so a referendum has to be done to give it legitimacy.
Small stuff like that isn’t important, it becomes a different matter if people are taking vans and lorries loaded with goodies back and forth accross the border though.
They don’t belong in the EU customs union—they need to leave with the rest of the UK!
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