Author: johnredwood

The latest job figures confirm that the UK economy is slowing as the rest of the world does. The combined impact of the UK’s home grown fiscal and monetary squeeze, and of the big fall in worldwide car output and manufacturing more generally is being seen. The poor background of trade wars and new tariffs does not help.

Over the last week the USA has threatened Turkey with higher tariffs in steel and suspension of trade talks. The US-China talks stumble on in the hope that they could at least delay or cancel the next round of US tariff rises mid month this month. The disputes in Kashmir, South Korea-Japan, and US- Iran also continue.

We are told the UK government plans a budget for early November, when they need to provide some stimulus . India, France, China and others have made recent cuts to taxation, which the UK also needs to do.

As some of you only want to write about Brexit, here is your chance. I’m sticking with my view of the problems with the Withdrawal Agreement and the need to propose a Free Trade Agreement.

So what deal or agreement if any would you like the UK to propose during these secret talks?

What Agreement do you think the EU would accept, other than the already drafted Withdrawal Agreement?

A recent German study puts the cost of taking Germany to net zero carbon by 2050 at Euro 7.6 trillion. Much of this will fall on German consumers to pay. They will need to buy different cars, insulate their homes, change the heating systems in their homes, pay more for their travel and the rest.

Some of this cost will be displacement of investment renewal that takes place anyway. Cars, boilers, trucks, planes all have a finite life. The additional cost comes from replacements that are dearer than the originals, and above all from regulators requiring early retirement of the existing investment.

The business world will be at the forefront of this transition. The petrol companies have to move from a big chain of filling stations to a big chain of electric chargers. The airlines have to buy a new generation of jets that burn alternative fuels. The plastics industry has to close capacity whilst the paper and wood industry needs to expand for packaging and other items.

It would be good to see a proper costing for the UK, and more work on what this means by way of transformation of our shops, homes, industrial plants and transport systems. Clearly there need to be plenty of closures of hydrocarbon based ways of working, living and travelling. Car plants making petrol and diesel vehicles , oil and gas companies exploiting natural resources, manufacturers of traditional heating systems, fuel intensive production of many things will all need to adapt or be closed down.

What timetable do you think acceptable for this big change? Or do you think  this is a wrong course of action ? How much should an individual be expected to spend on home improvement and transport change?

Today is Queen’s speech day. It is the day to discuss where we want to take our country and what should be the priorities for public policy.

To those who want this site to write about Brexit every day I have just two things to say. The first is I do not change my views on the advantages of Brexit or on the need to get out on 31 October, so I do not need to keep reaffirming them.

I have set out my advice to the government on how best to do it on many occasions. The second is I see no point in  responding to every rumour, leak and piece of misinformation about the talks and the possible outcomes.  Meanwhile there are crucial issues that matter that we do as a country need to debate and tackle.

My main priority for the government is to confirm the action it will be taking to stimulate our economy and to distance ourselves from the German recession and the advanced slowdown on the continent. I want to see additional good measures to promote growth, following a couple of years of fiscal and monetary squeeze from the UK authorities.

I wish to see a defined programme of good investment, public and private, in transport, broadband, water and energy. We need more capacity in each of these areas. I want to hear of the tax cuts we can now afford so net take home pay is higher and businesses and entrepreneurs keep more of their profits to allow reinvestment.

I see from briefings that we can expect legislation and or administrative changes  to alter the way we own and run our railways. I will write more about this as we await conclusions from the latest review of our system.

The government does need to review its tax and regulatory policy towards cars given the worldwide impact EU and various countries’ policies are now having on motor manufacturing. It also needs to talk about the way the move of the EU to zero tariffs on Japanese cars over the next few years may impact the balance of Japanese manufacturing as between Japan and the EU as a whole.

I am glad the government has confirmed the higher sums for state schools for next year, which will be welcome in low funded areas like Wokingham and West Berkshire. The new money going into the NHS needs to be wisely spent, with Ministers telling us what improvements we will  be buying with the cash.

One of the big wins from Brexit can be a new agrarian revolution in the UK. We should develop policies to rebuild our self sufficiency in temperate food, as we virtually enjoyed before joining the Common Agricultural Policy. We should also look at other ways of increasing the use we make of our farmland to increase farm incomes.

Cutting food miles should be part of the aim. Investing in better farming methods should be the means of achieving the improvements. UK farms could do with more capital and successful farmers need access to more land to farm.

The UK has not invested as much in market gardening to produce vegetables and salads in the way the Netherlands has done. Our climates are very similar, but the Netherlands have gone much further in putting in glass houses and other protective systems to extend growing seasons and raise crop output.

We need improved funding of tenant and farm owner capital from both the commercial sector and from government as part of its financial support. In many cases forward contracts from leading retailers will make it possible to finance this type of expansion.

In the dairy sector more joint working with the leading food manufacturers and retailers could create more milk demand for conversion to value added products like cheese and yoghurt.

Landowners and tenant farmers can also add other incomes from making land available for solar arrays, battery storage and other green energy activities. We also need to stimulate more tree planting. Our growing conditions are often better than Scandinavia and Canada yet we import most of our wood.

With a massive £20 bn food deficit with huge EU there is plenty of scope for new farming expansion here at home.

The choice before us is not leaving with or without a deal. The choice is simple. We either leave without signing the Withdrawal Agreement or we stay in for an indeterminate transition period with no agreement on what we are trying to transit to.

Were we to sign a version of the misnamed Withdrawal Agreement we stay in for 21 to 45 months more under full EU legal control and making large payments to them. This time is available to try and negotiate an exit. Who can doubt throughout such a time Remain would be urging more delay in exit? And why should the EU rush to offer us good terms for exit when they had secured everything they wanted in the deliciously misnamed Withdrawal Treaty? They would have the UK’s money and compliance without facing our voice, vote and veto as they develop their centralising plans further.

What Mrs May and her officials probably had in mind for the eventual Future Partnership Treaty was a beefed up EU Turkey or EU Ukraine Association Agreement, locking us in in Perpetuity to many of the features of the EU we wanted to leave. Mr Johnson has made clear he just wants a Free Trade Agreement, which is greatly preferable. In which case the best course is to short cut these things and find out now if the EU will sit down and negotiate one or not. Either way we can then leave on 31October.

The PM has done well to get the EU to talk. He must now ask for enough change to honour the referendum result.

As the world manufacturing downturn intensifies the Fed has joined the Bank of Japan and the European central Bank in trying to ease the situation. The Fed has decided to create money and expand its balance sheet to ease the obvious shortage of cash in the short term lending markets between banks. This is welcome and necessary.

All the main Central Banks of the world with the exception of the Bank of England are now taking belated action to ease, to try to turn round the manufacturing slowdown created by past policy tightness , by other tax and regulatory policies targeting vehicle manufacture in particular, and the impact of new and additional tariffs.  I must ask again why is the Bank of England standing out against this trend? Who doesn’t it share the analysis and conclusions of other Central Banks?

The Bank of Japan is creating as much money as it takes to buy in government bonds to keep interest rates at zero for 10 year money, and negative rates  for shorter terms. The ECB is keeping the official short rate at zero, with negative rates for many government bonds for longer terms. To do so it is now buying in Euro 20bn a month of bonds. The Fed is putting $75bn overnight into money markets to keep the repo or short interbank rate down in line with official rates. The official rate has been cut twice recently and is probably about to be cut again.

Central banks in India, Turkey, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere have been cutting official rates. All this is seeking to offset the negative impacts of higher taxes, tariffs and tighter lending conditions. So far the actions have not turned the corner for manufacturing, though they have prevented a even faster and deeper slump.

As highlighted here before, the UK not only refuses to join in  with a general  move to assist manufacturing, but the authorities are considering a further restriction on car loans which lies at the heart of part of the problem of insufficient demand for new vehicles.  The latest GDP figures which suggest there will be no recession in the second and third quarters of the year continue to show a very weak vehicle manufacturing sector for the reasons forecast here.

The Bank’s new £20 note shows  the  great Turner painting of the Temeraire on the back. It’s a curious choice for an institution so concerned about our relations with the EU.

Part of the problem facing the world economy and assisting the global manufacturing recession is the outbreak of tariff and trade wars.

The largest is in the headlines regularly as China and the USA battle out a new basis for trade between them. There are others. There is the South Korea/Japan trade war over historic conflicts and grievances. There is the interruption to trade created in Kashmir by the clash between Pakistan and India. There are the tariffs the US has imposed on the EU following the adverse finding over Airbus subsidies. There is the US attempt to get Iran to change her approach to Middle Eastern politics by imposing a wide range of sanctions on trade with Iran, and now seeking to prevent payments for exports to Iran through the western banking system.

None of these is helpful to world growth, jobs and output. Many of them individually are not significant in their impact on the world economy, but cumulatively they are now having a measurable impact. More importantly they are also damaging confidence, which leads to cancelled investment programmes, less demand and a further slowdown in economic activity.

The US has escalated its dispute with China to include criticisms of China’s approach to the Hong Kong protests, and to encompass bans on the sale of US items to Chinese technology firms . The US is critical of China’s approach to intellectual property and concerned about the potential use of certain technologies for strategic and political purposes.

The UK’s recent tweaking of its proposed tariff schedule for post Brexit trade is a welcome example of an attempt to go the other way. Tariffs will be removed from certain items altogether, so 88% of our trade is tariff free once out of the EU. Economic analysis suggests removing all tariffs would boost consumers more and would benefit the economy over all but would come at a potentially high cost to sectors at risk, mainly in agriculture.

The government has sought to find a balance,. offering some tariff protection to UK farmers but otherwise opting for a freer system. IT is a pity the world as a whole cannot move on from this period of tariff wars, which are adding more downward pressures on growth to the monetary policy and economic policy mistakes of the major players .

Germany yesterday we are told asserted herself again as the leader of the EU. In a few harsh words Mrs Merkel effectively said to Mr Johnson he was wasting his time and the time and energy of the UK government in seeking changes to the Irish backstop. As far as she was concerned the EU needed the full backstop, customs union and single market alignment.

I doubt Mrs Merkel had phoned round the other 25 member states and checked their view on this. She does regularly clear things with France. I do not think she was formally speaking for the EU, which has entrusted this to their Negotiator in chief. I do think once again she revealed how the modern EU works. Germany is the leader, and Germany feels she can say these things, safe in the knowledge the others will accept them. There was no sudden outpouring of disagreement or protest at her reported words, nor any official denial.

As someone who thought simply renegotiating the backstop was insufficient given the nature of the rest of the Withdrawal Agreement, it serves to underline just how committed to this draft Treaty the EU is that they will not even countenance changes to one of its worst features. It does not augur well for future talks or imply with some more give and take there might be an agreement. Mrs Merkel has condemned a modest UK proposal to deal with one of the bad features of the Agreement without offering anything back and without implying she is willing to compromise on anything else.

Yesterday the government confirmed it will be leaving the EU on October 31st, deal or no deal. It looks as if the EU wants a no deal result or think they can find a way to stop Brexit altogether. Such is the damage to the UK’s negotiating position the Parliamentary opposition to Brexit has now done.