Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Oh, they've signed a whole bunch of MOUs with various US states — they'd be up to 7 or 8 now, I think, and there are more under discussion. They're pretty easy to negotiate because they are short and virtually content-free, and each of them is more or less a cut-and-paste of the previous one. They're full of vague aspirational language about promoting this and fostering that and sharing the intent to co-operate on the other with no actual specific or measurable commitments or obligations in them, And then they say:

They're candy floss, basically.

As noted, they have nothing to do with Brexit. Individual Member States can and do sign similar MOUs with US states; indeed, sub-national units of Member States do too — e.g. German Länder, Belgian provinces, etc. If the UK saw any value in these MOUs it could have entered into them at any time while a Member State, as could any of the UK's devolved governments.

Seriously, if the poor deluded fools who parrot the propaganda about "massive new trade deals" as a "brexit benefit" on their social media accounts actually took the trouble to read one of them — as I say, they're only a few pages long — they'd be clenching their buttocks with shame and mortification.

Well considering this is money paid by Irish importers to the Irish exchequer it's hardly a benefit for us. In fact it probably has contributed to the higher cost of living here.

Still, it does show the pointlessness of Brexit fairly clearly.

No. In large measure this used to be (pre-Brexit) paid by Irish importers to their UK suppliers who paid impost duties to the UK Treasury. Now the same Irish importers pay it to the Irish Exchequer. So it's a loss to the UK Treasury and a gain to the Irish exchequer. Irish consumers are not all that affected the same import taxes are still being paid.

A gain to the Irish Exchequer is ultimately a gain to "us", either in more scope for expenditure on public services, of for cuts in taxation.

It's a positive, but not as big a positive as you might think. 80% of the customs duty collected by Ireland (and other member states) is remitted to the EU; we only keep 20%, and that's supposed to cover the costs of collection.

(In fact it does rather more than cover the costs of collection, so we do benefit from it. But to a much smaller extent than the gross figures might suggest.)

Explanation: One of the problems about setting up a customs union is that at least some of the member states are going to collect next to no customs duty any more; it's the states at the borders of the customs union that collect customs duty; no further duty is payable when the imported goods are transported onwards from those border states to the interior states. So there has to be an arrangement by which the benefit of the duty collected by the border states is shared with all members of the customs union.

In the EU, that arrangement is that 80% of the duty collected goes into the EU budget, resulting in smaller budget contributions being required from all member states, border and interior alike.

20% is retained by the collecting border state, partly to compensate them for the costs of collection but also to give then an incentive to collect. If a border state skimps on customs enforcement, the burder of lost revenue is born by all members states, but the costs savings from not operating border procedures accrues to the border state alone. Getting to keep 20% of the duty means that it makes sense for them to put resources into customs collection and enforcement.