1/ Thread of random things to keep in mind when reading these and other stories about the border this week as the UK attempts to start actually enforcing its own regulatory checks.
3/ The UK's bringing in checks at the border is a largely unilateral decision. It doesn't have to do this, but is choosing to.
Checks at the border are always about trading greater control for more cost and hassle.
UK is somewhere on that upward arc.
4/ One reason the UK might be doing this is that goods going the other way (from the UK into the EU) face these checks already.
That means if you have customers in both, it currently makes more commercial sense to produce in the EU and export to the UK than vice versa.
5/ Prior to Brexit and during the transition period, the UK and EU considered one another's regulations equivalent which significantly reduced the need for checks - but required collective regulatory setting.
Even less cost and hassle, but even less control.
6/ The UK could simply choose, as it has been doing, to treat goods coming in from the EU as equivalent or safe enough further checks aren't needed.
However, this would mean accepting EU standards as valid, and the EU likely would not reciprocate.
7/ Greater checks at the UK border hurt UK consumers and EU exporters.
Greater checks at the EU border hurt EU consumers and UK exporters.
The average EU citizen consumes fewer UK goods and exports less to the UK than the other way around.
Hence the power dynamic here.
8/ Side note: One of the reasons for the (much maligned) European Court of Justice was to make a system where a group of countries are all enforcing the same regulations work.
You could "sue" another EU member state if they started slacking off when it came to enforcement.
9/ One reason the UK/EU border is especially tricky on this kind of stuff is that the absence of such checks for many years means:
1. There wasn't any infrastructure; 2. There weren't enough professionals; 3. Businesses built their supply chains on no-check assumptions.
10/ The UK has had to delay its implementation of these checks five times because addressing the three points above is hard, expensive and far from straight forward.
Number 3 especially led firms to deliver fresh food, in mixed consignments on tight turnarounds. Tricky.
11/ The UK political system has, for a variety of reasons, not been great at tackling this problem head on.
An inability to accept the reality of this chart, and have a frank and honest conversation with the public about the fact that reintegration has costs, not just benefits.
12/ The pathological need to keep anything resembling a bad news Brexit story out of the press has lead to a siege mentality on the part of the government that might otherwise have provided businesses the clarity they needed to plan and prepare.
Unfortunate. 🤷♂️
13/ There is no correct point to be at on the Control vs Cost curve.
Each government must make its own decision. I wrote my book because I wanted people to understand that these are decisions, and help voters challenge those who'd pretend they're easy.
1/ First and foremost, if it ever comes to a real jets, tanks and missiles shooting war with China, the paltry parcels of old tech the US is contributing to Ukraine will be completely immaterial to the outcome.
2/ A conflict with China will either be very small and contained, with both sides desperately monitoring escalation - in which case what the US has already will suffice, or a massive total war requiring production on levels that dwarf what's being sent to Ukraine.
3/ Even discounting nuclear weapons, a total war with China scenario is virtually impossible to 'prepare for' adequately unless the US is ready to basically put its economy on a war footing immediately.
Certainly you can't prepare for it by cheaping out on aid to Ukraine.
The book's premise is that trade policy is a growing part of the conversation around issues, from jobs to healthcare and even war that voters actually care about...
... but it's complex and counter-intuitive, so politicians can lie about it with impunity, and that matters.
1/ I like people and think they're overwhelmingly good and decent.
My default assumption is that whatever the slogans, or extremist elements, the vast majority of the people on the streets are just appalled by the images coming out of Gaza, and are calling for peace.
2/ Has every single person marching got a comprehensive and fool proof 12 point plan for reconciling Palestinian independence, Israeli security, regional geo-stability and the million other factors at play?
No, and that's fine. Marches are about sending signals that we care.
3/ Do I, as a Jew, wish the marchers were a little bit more thoughtful about the implications of some of their messaging?
Sure. I guess.
But it's a mass movement and like all such things, creates its own social incentives for having the spiciest take in the room.
1/ International law lacks enforcement because major powers negotiating it did not want mechanisms that could kinetically prevent, curtail or punish the pursuit of their ends, even if the means involved breach the letter or spirit of the law.
2/ What little power international law has is almost entirely normative.
It only matters as long as countries believe it matters - and so for lack of better options we repeat ad nauseum that it does, while also arguing its broad benefits outweigh any specific constraints.
3/ What's infuriating about this is that reinforcing the normative power of international law rhetorically requires a great deal of exaggeration, selective vision and hypocrisy.
To make the case that international law matters we have to ignore all the times it clearly didn't.