Reeves moves to block cheap imports undercutting British high street

28 comments

1. So instead of cheap, shitty made products, we can have expensive shitty made products…

2. Oh, nice, so you get the same as from AliExpress, but you get the priceless feeling of putting a High Street chain owner kids through Eton.

3. She must have got a sniff of that last fiver I found down the back of the sofa

4. Honest question – would this be possible if we were still in the EU?

   Edit: who downvotes someone for asking a question?!

5. To really tackle the issues on the high street, we need to;

   • Remove or drastically reduce business rates
   • Ban the conversion of shops into housing and force landlords to fill them (at whatever rent they can get) to ensure the market rate is realistic
   • Make car parking charges less punitive

6. Undercutting what on the high street? What’s left?

   Vapes, betting shops, charity shops (great!), the occasional cafe maybe, and then what? Home Bargains? Or does she still think people wave a copy of their newspaper at the butcher as they walk past with their dog and go ‘oh no Rover, no sausages for you today!’

   There is absolutely no reason today I’d go out to my local high street. There’s fucking nothing there!

7. The previous low value threshold was £15.00, in reality that meant nearly every item arriving in the uk was valued at £14.99. When it moved to £135 so did the value of the goods, doesn’t help that HMRC are toothless when they find mass import fraud going on – criminals are going to be criminals unless they actually face consequences, it’s also tied into foreign exporters being allowed to register in the uk as uk companies and importing wholesale with bugger all regulation and regularly just disappearing off the radar with unpaid tax.

8. The comments reflect perfectly an adage my Grandmother had about politics: “Nobody’s ever happy.”

   Outsources: Buy British! The high street! British Business!!! Less dependence on China!

   Reduces Outsourcing: Higher prices! Inflationary! Cost of living!

   I’m not a Reeves or Starmer fan, but boy, this country cannot be pleased.

9. Will they be selling UK made items only on the high street or a cheap imports with a label?

10. bring back jobs for match stick makers and chimney sweeps

11. “Swift action to protect British consumers”

    That swift action being a swift kick in the balls.

12. So she’s considering targetting cheap imports, and the markets they come from, with effective on-import taxes to make them less competitive vs more expensive products produced locally. Shall we, for the sake of argument, call them “tariffs” or something like that? All safe in the knowledge that this would *never* result in retaliation. Definitely not.

    Jesus wept, has she been having a nap since January? Oh hang on, would the primary recipient of these be, let’s say, China. Is the UK sucking up to Yankeestan? I mean it is pathetic if so.

13. What about those UK businesses that buy goods from China to combine?

    We build things and the last thing I want is a trade war.

    I want to feel good about invoices going out. If she does this and hikes things for everyone my customers won’t be able to afford my service so there’s 8 jobs.

    The best thing I can get from a government is to be left alone as a small business.

14. Now move to block the cheap labour being imported and undercutting British workers.

15. She get this idea while over in the US on her latest trip?

16. Whhhhhy? Everything is imported we don’t make shit

17. Rearranging the deck chairs on The Titanic.

    Once the money starts flooding out of the USA thanks to Project 2025, the coming global crash will make 2008 seem like a picnic.

18. I already make a serious effort to buy from British companies with higher prices for products I could get that would be cheaper if they were foreign. I never even use Temu or Shein or Amazon. I make sure my products origin and profits stay in the U.K. and if not I usually buy second-hand. but I don’t like being told what to do and having my life made harder by an incompetent government.

    So if they now make it harder for me to buy the few foreign products I do buy I will switch 100% of my expenditure to foreign products only no more buying British products I will make sure anything I buy is supporting foreign people and lands. I’m the type of person that takes buy British seriously so if this crap goes forward I will be very soured especially the £135 customs tax exemption.

19. My issue with the highstreet is that it’s inaccessible.
    The parking fare is outrageous and taking the bus isn’t much better.
    Then when you get into town there’s pubs, pubs, some more pubs, a Starbucks posing as a pub and a Waterstones.

    That is to say there’s nothing in town to justify the sheer cost of entry.

20. Perhaps people wouldn’t be so desperate to import cheaper alternatives if they could actually afford what’s on offer in the high street? Wages are too low and prices too high, so of course people aren’t going to waste the little free time they have finding a car parking space, paying for parking fees and then strolling the high street for the chance to buy the same thing at a higher cost.

    To be honest, so far this year I’ve only popped to the “high street” once, and that was to the local pub for a birthday dinner. These days anything I see in town I can find online for cheaper and with less effort, and as much as I really want to support small businesses, I just can’t afford to be spending more money than I need to, even if it’s for a moral cause.

    I wish the government would spend more time trying to fix the core issue of nobody being able to afford anything rather than just “blocking” cheap imports which presumably will only make things even more expensive. I’d love to have high quality, British made goods but realistically the days of that being affordable for the average person are long gone, so I’ll stick to only buying vintage clothes and give the £5 coffees on the high street a miss.

    As a side note, f*ck Trump and the ripple effect his stupidity has on the world.

21. VAT should already be collected at the point of sale so I’m not sure what the effectiveness of the change will be.

    It’s probably worth mirroring the EU for ease and understanding to foreign exporters.

    But I can’t say I understand these change.

    It seems marginal if you exclude the impact of the courier companies admin fees – they’ll be the biggest beneficiaries of the change.

22. Yeah make everything more expensive why don’t you. Not as if we are struggling with the cost of living.

23. Yet Treasury are practically begging Shein to list in London?

24. What hight streets? It’s all takeaways, barbers, vape shops, pubs and charity shops. If I want to spend physical cash I have to travel into a city. The government has no incentive to restore the “high street”.

25. Oh so they’re following in the steps of the US, making things more expencive for the British people

26. That horse has well and truly bolted, aged, and died.

27. UK is not a manufacturing economy, it’s a services economy. Should be trying to make imports as cheap as possible.

28. She’s so out of touch it’s painful….

    Whilst in the corporate world she lived the luxury life on expenses to such an extreme a whistleblower raised the alarm on her and she got investigated, and found to be dodgy (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvmg924nk1o)

    But surprise surprise, no record of what happened next…….

    Probably doing the same now with her snout in the parliamentary trough, whilst riding the 2nd job gravytrain.

    Bet she’s got plenty left over come the end of the month for luxuries from the boutiques !

    I haven’t. Aliexpress is about the only place I can afford to treat myself these days.

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