"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
tim... wrote:
We will use standard WTO rules until we can negotiate something better.

We will almost certainly, unilaterally remove import tariffs from stuff
that we "need" to import, such as food!

If the UK is outside the EU, what do you mean by unilaterally? In
contravention of WTO rules?

WTO rules allow you to apply tariffs (to imports), they don't mandate it.

Currently we apply tariffs to food from ROW because the EU requires us to do
so to protect the vested interests of inefficient EU farmers.

If we left the EU we would have no need to be protectionist and would
(probably) remove all tariffs from imported foodstuffs, even if the other
countries that we import from did not reciprocate.

An independant UK is never going to have a problem importing goods.

Correct

but there is no need for us to make it artificially more expensive like we
do at the moment

Why
would it? Apart from perhaps strategically sensitive stuff like arms, etc.

The difficult bit is exporting stuff - to pay for all those imports.

As I have said more than once, the majority of our exports are of "quality"
and specialist products. The demand for those would not go away

tim