How very dare trade make us better off!
China is set to flood Britain with cheap vapes, researchers have said, as manufacturers seek to capitalise on the world’s second biggest market after Donald Trump’s tariffs.
A trade standoff between Washington and Beijing has thrown the business world into chaos, with investors watching as each country dares the other to blink first.
After last week’s uneasy truce, the total US import tax on Chinese-made vapes stood at about 60%. That has sent China’s $11.1bn (£8.4bn) e-cigarette export industry, already scarred by stringent domestic restrictions in 2022, back to the drawing board.
It comes as the UK’s forthcoming ban on disposable vapes, which aims to reduce the number of devices that are thrown away – about 8m a week – and stop young people from taking up the habit, has brought new models of e-cigarette into the market.
So trade is bringing us new and novel and also cheaper. How much richer we are all being made by this, no?
And of course there’s the health benefit as well - vapes are the most successful smoking cessation product ever made. So, to the extent that we care about what others do to their own lungs then that’s good too.
As ever, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. Therefore we’ll just have to bite the bullet of higher health care costs as the reduction in tobacco smoking puts those costs up as more survive longer into old age. But, you know, that’s what a health care system is for, right?
No, this all sounds quite wondrous to us. Ain’t trade a lovely thing?
Tim Worstall