How to trade with India
The idea of trading with a vast Indian market isn’t new. It’s something that Englishmen managed to do successfully for generations.
David Cameron is absolutely right to want to develop closer trade ties between our two countries. How might this be done?
Trade delegations are important – especially for big business interests. But if trade was created by the kind of trade quangos that have grown up over the past few decades, we’d have been increasing, not losing, our share of global markets.
Getting Indians to buy things that we produce means producing things that Indians want at a price they’re willing to pay.
Sounds simple, but it's not easy. And we've made it progressively harder.
We’ve driven up non-wage labour costs and various compliance costs, pricing British businesses out of world markets. In order to produce something, an entrepreneur often now needs to seek permission from officials somewhere along the line. Note how British businesses wanting to sell financial products to the Indian market will, for example, now have to comply with the latest batch of EU financial service directives. Our manufacturers must comply with EU single market rules, even if they don't intend to sell to the EU.
Then when an entrepreneur still manages to create wealth, they have to hand over a large slice of it to the government in various forms of tax.
The best way to encourage trade with India is to cut tax and regulation in Britain.