The recently concluded Trade Deal with the US is yet another body blow for the rural economy in the North. Allowing in to our country thousands of tonnes of beef produced under different ethical standards makes for unfair competition for our livestock farmers and allowing an unlimited flood of US produced ethanol will likely result in the closure or the entirety of our British ethanol manufacturing with the largest factory being based at Wilton, Teesside and its feedstock produced on farms throughout the North .
In a panicked response to tariffs on luxury cars being imported by the US, our Government has effectively given away the UK ethanol manufacturing industry perhaps not recognising that these US imports are from a massively subsidised US ag industry and produced with electricity a 1/3rd of the price of our own. Due to this unfair competition UK produced ethanol will now be uneconomic, removing over 1M tonnes of UK wheat demand with much of this coming from the North.
A little known fact is that much of the UK supply of Carbon Dioxide, which is used in many and varied industrial and food processing operations, is an important by-product of ethanol production. So the knock on effects are not just on rural areas of the North but they also have serious consequences for other industries.
So it seems that, once again, the North suffers from decisions made far away in London.
