Back to off? - Sam Setter's 'Pills': For readers who need some wry medicinal humour

Our industry has been submitted for years to the unrealistic and ideological EU sustainability directives, mainly pushed by Dutch ex-EU commissioner Frans Timmermans, who, not happy with the damage he has done in the EU, now tries to ruin the political atmosphere in his own country. These directives have more to do with ideology than with realistic environmental improvement. The EU is adjusting the directives concerning petrol driven cars with consumers being dissatisfied with electric vehicles which are costly and financially far less efficient than the combustion engine cars. Similarly, the EU is backtracking on its environmental directives which also concern our industry. Will it be beneficial to our industry? Probably yes, but it has already spent a fortune to become compliant with the original restrictive EU directives, sustained by NGOs and regretfully also by leather industry components, who, financed by the industry, rather than backing the EU directives, should have opposed the EU directives and demanded adjustments. If the hopefully less restrictive future EU environmental directives should have shone some light at the end of the leather tunnel, the recent imposition of import duties for exports to the United States shuts the door mid-tunnel. This is hopefully temporary, particularly for emerging countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh as well as most African countries, for which COMESA has launched the fourth of fifth leather strategy in the last 10/15 years (without ever having made any difference except spending taxpayer money). For developed countries, the problem will be less serious as their high-end customers will not have too much of a problem paying $1.000 rather than $800 for a pair of shoes or $70.000 rather than $50.000 for a leather bag. It’s the consumers of the volume $50 pair of shoes who will not be able to pay $70 for the same pair of shoes and hence will look for alternative materials. And by the way, the duty increase at import level is not what the level of price increase at retail level will be. Each stage in the distribution chain adds its percentage – hence a duty increase of 20% may well become 30-40% at retail level.

Yeah, the tunnel is and remains dark for the moment.