Customs and Borders

That is right. If a manufacturer’s components come in from China but then, as part of the manufacturing process, the product moves to France for further manufacturing, and the components come back again and are then sent somewhere else, at every stage those calculations would have to be done. At the moment, because we all have the common external tariff, when the components come in from China or elsewhere in the world, those rules of origin checks do not need to be done after the manufacturing process and before it is sold on. It does not matter where the widgets come from or where the gadgets go; we have the common external tariff, which makes that process much, much smoother than it would otherwise be.