Tariff hike to curb imports is exactly the wrong move? In his weekly column for The National, veteran finance writer Patrick Werr takes issue with the Finance Ministry’s raising of tariffs on non-essential goods as a means of slowing the FX burn on imports. The notion that tariffs will curb imports “fell apart when the government floated the pound last month. The official price of the pound fell by half almost overnight, and imports were suddenly twice as expensive, putting them out of reach of people’s budgets. Local products became far more attractive. This is why last week’s tariff increases are so confounding. They are counterproductive to the government’s efforts to stimulate growth and painful to consumers already trying to absorb austerity measures imposed over the past two months.”