How glorious this bankruptcy is!

Yes, of course, it’s wholly correct to have some empathy for those who are to lose their jobs and incomes here. Yet it is still true that this is a glorious outcome:

The UK’s largest bioethanol plant is to close after being dealt a body blow by Keir Starmer’s trade deal with Donald Trump.

The owner of the Vivergo plant in Hull, owned by Associated British Foods (ABF), said it would close with the loss of 160 jobs, just hours after the government said it would not fund an industry rescue package. The first redundancies will be made on Tuesday.

Bioethanol is, in itself, a nonsense anyway. It produces more CO2 than the amount allegedly saved at the tailpipe. It only exists because of the green hijacking of the law making system - and only exists upon subsidy as well. That very fact that it must be subsidised is that proof that it makes us all poorer. Both the subsidy itself and also that it requires it - the output is worth less than the costs of the inputs, this is something we should not be doing anyway.

But it’s better than this, this bankruptcy, as well:

Britain’s biggest bioethanol plant is shutting down with the loss of 160 jobs after the UK-US trade deal opened up the market to cheaper imports from America.

Vivergo Fuels, which is owned by Associated British Foods, said it had no choice but to close its site on the Saltend Chemicals Park near Hull after the government took the “deeply regrettable” decision “not to support a key national asset”. It had been seeking taxpayer support for the plant, which has been losing £3 million a month.

We did this - we, collectively - simply by having free trade. Even if bioethanol is a bad idea we just said OK, whoever makes this cheapest gets the business. As it happens the US also subsidises bioethanol production, a very silly thing for them to be doing. But the end result here is that it’s now American taxpayers who have to cough up that subsidy, not British. We are now importing Uncle Sam’s money in fact, we’ve a gift and freebie from the Yanks to Brits. Isn’t that lovely?

Even when it’s a bad idea - as bioethanol is - free trade still makes it better. Look at the outcome here - the Americans are now sending us shiploads of free money. Why would we be against that idea?

Tim Worstall