Free trade key to solving cost of living crisis
24 July 2023
SUGGESTED
Healthcare
Kristian Niemietz quoted by The Daily Mail
21 July 2023
Housing and Planning
Housing and Planning
Mark Littlewood writes for The Times
IEA Director General Mark Littlewood has written for The Times exploring the importance of trade liberalisation in boosting economic outcomes.
Mark Littlewood wrote:
“A substantial liberalisation of trade policy could swiftly mitigate the cost of living crisis, potentially even end it. This is no easy area to navigate and is often likened to playing multi-dimensional chess.
“In 2017, Patrick Minford, the economist, calculated that a strategy of unilateral free trade could lower prices generally by 8 per cent, food prices by 20 per cent and add 4 per cent to economic growth. Even a fraction of such gains would be transformative.
“If last week’s by-elections show an electorate with significant concerns about the cost of living, solutions are available. It would require politicians to abandon fashionable causes that bear down on household spending power and instead to focus on more technical, less glamorous policy areas that can be expected to lower prices rather than raise them.”
You can read the full article here.
Mark Littlewood wrote:
“A substantial liberalisation of trade policy could swiftly mitigate the cost of living crisis, potentially even end it. This is no easy area to navigate and is often likened to playing multi-dimensional chess.
“In 2017, Patrick Minford, the economist, calculated that a strategy of unilateral free trade could lower prices generally by 8 per cent, food prices by 20 per cent and add 4 per cent to economic growth. Even a fraction of such gains would be transformative.
“If last week’s by-elections show an electorate with significant concerns about the cost of living, solutions are available. It would require politicians to abandon fashionable causes that bear down on household spending power and instead to focus on more technical, less glamorous policy areas that can be expected to lower prices rather than raise them.”
You can read the full article here.
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