Plans announced on Monday (July 3) to impose new EU taxes on imported shoes for at least the next five years are being condemned by the British Retail Consortium as bad for consumers and bad for retailers.
The new duties will be higher and wider ranging than before, pushing up prices, hitting low income families and wiping out retailers', already modest, margins.
In April the Commission added 19 per cent to the cost of leather shoes imported from China and Vietnam. Revealing its proposed legislation, the Commission now says it intends to raise the duty to 23 per cent, extend it until 2011 and remove the, previously agreed, exemption for children's shoes.
Kevin Hawkins, Director General of the British Retail Consortium, said: "The Commission is caving in to the pleadings of uncompetitive European producers who it clearly favours over low income families and retail workers."
"Yet this substantial and damaging new tax will do nothing to create or preserve a single job in European shoe production. Manufacturers here don't make the low cost shoes China and Vietnam produce."
"All duties will do is wipe out any profit margin made on leather shoe sales, forcing retailers to either raise prices or cut costs by axing jobs. There will be no long-term winners from this latest blow to the free trade principles the EU says it supports."
The average net margin for retailers is around five per cent but the Commission expects them to absorb a 23 per cent duty.
British Retail Consortium
marketing@alchempro.com
