After weeks of trouble and turmoil, Britain's besieged economy last week got some good news. The Board of Trade announced that Britain's trade gap narrowed by nearly half in December, to $171 million, as exports rose to a record and imports dipped. Any worsening of those figures would almost certainly have meant another strong attack on the pound and further weakening of confidence in the British economy.
But the improvement was costly: it was due in part to a controversial 15% import tax that has angered Britain's trading partners and seriously threatened the future of the European Free Trade Association, the seven-nation,...
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