The European Commision’s stance on this is baffling to me. It seems like both the EU and UK motor industry would be big losers under the current arrangement.
I get the EC may not have the most favourable view of the UK right now, but does it make sense to handicap their own manufacturers for a few political brownie points?
The problem with exploitative supply chains is that they’re chains, so even if you make one link less exploitative, the sources and next steps in the chain likely remain exploitative.
Each improvement makes things better. If we let perfect be the enemy of good then we just allow exploitation to continue because we couldn’t fix it all at once.
Companies have already been exerting influence on these supply chains for decades to “improve” them, and they have only gotten worse. No, I don’t think that’s better.
Manufacturers aren’t going to just sit back and say, “oh well I guess we’ll just not compete in the industry anymore, let’s just let our competitors take it.” No way, the people running these firms aren’t going to just throw away business like that. They’ll lose out on some profits for a while and throw all their toys out the pram about that, but they will not just leave the market (or price themselves out of it). That’s just their gaslighting propaganda.