Commenting North Antrim TUV MP Jim Allister said:
“The EU has today announced its intention to retaliate to the introduction of 25% steel and aluminium tariffs, with its own package of tariffs in April. This is not retaliation in kind in the sense of a 25% tariff on US Steel and Aluminium but a retaliation in value. The EU says that the US tariffs constitute a $28 billion tax and it is responding with a counter 26 billion euro tax, but on completely different products, the diversity of which has been communicated by the headline: ‘boats, bourbon and motorbikes.’
“One of the absurdities arising from the EU dividing our country into two through their customs and international phytosanitary border, in addition to the huge problems arising from being alienated from the rest of our home economy and the constitutional injustice of our disenfranchisement in a staggering 300 areas of law, is the fact that our exporters and importers are also subject to EU rather than the UK tariff regime.
“Before today this already presented a challenge for NI businesses because UK trade instincts are more resolutely for free trade than those of the EU and so NI goods are more likely to import goods subject to a higher tariff than comparable companies in GB. The average UK tariff is 3.8% compared to an average EU tariff of 5%.
“However, the impact of the EU retaliation drives home yet again, much more starkly than before, how Northern Ireland has been cut off from the rest of our own country, and how we are now being subject, not just to legislation made by a foreign parliament that we did not elect, and cannot remove, but also the governance decisions of a foreign government we did not elect, and cannot remove.
“Northern Ireland already suffers from the costs of being alienated from the economies of scale of our home economy which, together with the border costs that have to be negotiated when accessing inputs from our own economy, place a greater upward pressure on price than in the rest of the country.
“Today, however, we are confronted by the prospects of significant further inflationary pressure as the costs of US imports to Northern Ireland will likely increase while imports of the same goods to the rest of the country remain unaffected.
“The EU’s decision helps to confront us once again with the completely absurd way in which Northern Ireland has been and is being treated. The Windsor Framework not only disenfranchises us in 300 areas of law, effecting the biggest reversal of democracy in modern times. It not only cuts us off from the rest of our home economy, our largest market, at great economic cost. It is now not only shown to be failing in its own terms, violating its own Article 16 safeguards. It is now effectively making us part of a foreign country for trading purposes, exposing us to the costs of the desire of that country to retaliate against the United States. Every day the implications of the Windsor Framework are revealed as being more far-reaching, more disruptive and more humiliating. Every day the new absurdities that it propagates make it more and more unsustainable.
“When we confront today’s news in the context of appreciating all the other problems with the Protocol, including the fact that it is now even failing in its own terms, violating Article 16, this greatly compounds the imperative for the UK Government to abandon the Irish Sea border in favour of managing the NI-ROI land border via Mutual Enforcement and seeking a trade deal with the United States.”