Astonished at the weekend at some of the comments from so-called economic correspondents who were cringing at Trump's tariffs over Greenland, predicting recession and ready to cave in to his every demand. How did it not occur to them that all we have to do is slap the same tariffs on US imports and the effect is completely neutralised?
This is not about the comparative size of our economies or any punitive effect on the US, which I agree would be minimal. It is simply about values. If we lose £15bn from exports to the US we gain £15bn on import substitution from the US. Net effect zero.
Of course there would be swings and roundabouts, and also some products we cannot source elsewhere. Obviously we would not put tariffs on the latter but compensate with higher tariffs on imports we can substitute.
We could even go a step further and refund our US customers with the new tariff income we receive on imports. UK 1; US 0.
