I enjoyed Tim Harford’s logic on tariffs (“An alternative take on Trump’s favourite word”, Spectrum, Life & Arts, February 22). Indeed, I enjoyed it so much I have adapted his thinking to devise a way to raise revenue to double Britain’s defence budget and fully fund the NHS for generations to come. The plan would be to charge the US a tariff for using the English language. An internationally accepted exchange rate already exists in the form of “Scrabble” letter scores. In the spirit of recent presidential announcements, the US government could backtrack rapidly to charge tariffs only on written English used on “X” and other such platforms.
Simon Crosby
Aysgarth, North Yorkshire, UK