Hilary Benn Quotes
Average tariffs between rich countries are only 3 per cent. But developing countries face tariffs of more than 300 per cent in the EU for meat and more than 200 per cent in the US for fruit and nuts. These need to come down dramatically.
Despite developed nation calls for free trade, The US, EEC and Japan maintain an extensive system of agricultural subsidies which are politically difficult to eliminate while expecting developing nations to eliminate their protectionist practices.
The issue of free trade has been controversial during the entire history of our Republic. At the time it was the Republicans who were the protectionists and the Democrats, the free traders.
In this case the tariffs were imposed not to protect national industries but to simply raise revenue. In the early years of the United States, almost all of the Federal Revenue was raised this way.
Hilary James Wedgwood Benn MP is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds Central since a by-election in 1999. He served in the Cabinet from 2003 to 2010, under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and was Shadow Foreign Secretary from May 2015 to June 2016. In October 2016, he was elected as the inaugural Chairman of the new Exiting the European Union Select Committee.