Trade regulations

SIR – I am at a loss to understand how our politicians are unable to grasp the basics of import and export.

If the United States sends us fridges, then these units must comply with our electrical and emissions standards. This equally applies to electrical goods we sell to America. There are similar constraints on food – for example, genetically modified agricultural products. You always need to comply with the standards of the country to which you are exporting products.

If a market for a discrete type of product is very small, then you need to consider whether compliance with its regulations is commercially viable. We know the EU’S product standards, and we can decide if the export market is viable to comply with that standard. This is regardless of any current standards that may apply in Britain.

It does mean, of course, that the EU would have to follow the higher British standards, for example in animal husbandry, before we accepted its products. Mike Ostick

Upton-upon-severn, Worcestershire

SIR – It is now proposed that we have a transition period where everything stays the same. Sir Humphrey Appleby would be so proud of this semantic achievement. Mark Robbins

Bruton, Somerset

SIR – Philip Duly (Letters, December 16) writes that free trade “is essentially what Brexit is about”.

It isn’t. It is about sovereignty: a cast iron fact that no one seems to have mentioned for weeks. Ian Curteis

Ripon, North Yorkshire

SIR – I am presently reading the excellent biography Castlereagh, about the 18th- and 19th-century politician, by John Bew.

In it he quotes the counterrevolutionary Friedrich von Gentz, who said of the Congress of Vienna, which aimed to secure long-term peace in Europe: “All eyes are turned on the Congress, and everybody expects of it the redress of his grievances, the fulfilment of his desires, and the triumph of his projects. For the most part all these explanations are unfounded and illusory.”

Plus ça change. John H Howarth

Alderley Edge, Cheshire