Lib Dims not getting the point

From the Liberal Democrats euro election manifesto:

By combining our economic power, as we have done through the single market, Europe gets better trade deals around the world than if each country were to negotiate independently.

Clearly no one in the entire party actually undertands the point of trade. Here’s the most recent Nobel Laureate in economics explaining about trade:

An international economics course should drive home to students the point that international trade is not about competition, it is about mutually beneficial exchange. Even more fundamentally, we should be able to teach students that imports, not exports, are the purpose of trade. That is, what a country gains from trade is the ability to import what it wants. Exports are not an objective in and of themselves: the need to export is a burden that the country must bear because its import suppliers are crass enough to demand payment.

All of the “trade deals” that the EU negotiates, those that the Lib Dims are praising, are about our exports. Which, as a real economist points out, are not what trade is about at all. What we’re interested in is the imports and the price we pay for them.

And, as we also know, the European Union imposes taxes upon imports. 66% on those Chinese compact fluorescent light bulbs that they insist we buy, 60% on Chinese candles and all of the rest.

The point of trade is the imports and the European Union deliberately makes them more expensive. Thus we get very bad trade deals indeed because of our membership of the EU.

But then I’m expecting a Lib Dim to have some knowledge of economics when I say that, aren’t I? Some hope, eh?