LETTER: Not worried over Trump's tariffs
American president Trump has put tariffs on EU steel and aluminium imports, hopefully they won’t bother us as we won’t be in the EU much longer and are importing 9.1 billion pounds worth of American steel in the American-made £75m each F-35 fighter jets.
Our own Hawker Siddeley Harrier Jump Jets were scrapped by the Tory/Liberal coalition.
Ironically some Harriers are still rotting in an American airplane graveyard in the Arizona desert, while the collaboration with other European countries to make a Euro fighter obviously hasn’t gone well as expected.
We are now going cap in hand to the Americans to make an aeroplane that can actually take off and land on our new carriers, prime example of how our EU membership has held our development back for last 40 years.
The real sickening irony here is that in WWII the Americans had to fit British Rolls Royce Merlin engines to their P51 Mustangs to make them a bit faster, this being so successful they made their own Packard V-16 Merlin copy under licence.
The first working jet engine was built by Sir Frank Whittle, but a German beat him to making the first jet engine flight in 1937.
Let’s hope that once we are free of the EU shackles, the F-35 replacement will be British designed and made.
Better still the strong independent countries like Britain will finally find a way to get on with each other and war planes and battleships will be a thing of the past.
Mr G E Fanthom
Swindon
