Wednesday, 29 August 2007

The Lights Are On But No One's At Home - DG Trade Get It Wrong

The decision by DG Trade to continue to hold in place a tariff on Chinese energy saving light bulbs is a foolish one.

It seems that only German light bulb company Osram wanted to keep the tariff. I hope that the tariff will be lifted and soon. It makes no sense for the European Commission to keep a tariff in place when they are trying to encourage European consumers to save energy.

It is also bad economics.

I hope that the tariff will be voted down by member states within the month.

The BBC have more information here.

2 comments:

Mountjoy said...

I'm afraid there aren't as many trained economists in DG Trade as there should be; and if they are they are "Euroeconomists" (i.e. EU politics is more influential than national economic interests!). Sad but true.

Tristan said...

I think Bastiat's Candle maker's Petition is rather apt here.

Perhaps we should be sending copies to the relevant commissioners? ;)