the EU & the UK

[maria2019]

I've been following this so long that I finally gave up. Parliament cant agree on anything, Theresa May is promising to retire if they just approve and pass something, the dates keep changing....too much

[MyNameIsTerry]

The EU trades as a Bloc so in theory gets better deals for the Bloc with other countries / Blocs, however this isn't always the case within the EU itself as has been said there are some agri economies that are incentivised beyond what Britain benefits.

The EU trade deals take/took years to get in place and in theory it should be quicker for Britain to negotiate independantly BUT currently it seems our Government and Civil Servants that promised a 100 trade deals by 29th March 2019 I believe had 8 trade deals ready, not good enough. WTO is a crock.

The backstop is a thorny issue but the DUP could play ball, in fact they ought to play ball as they dont want the break up of the UK however a No Deal Brexit I feel would definitely lead to the break up of the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe..._Customs_Union

'An agreement between the EU countries (plus Monaco and some British territories) to remove trade barriers so that when products travel between EU countries, there are no customs checks. However, when products come into the EU from countries outside, they will be checked and taxed - at a rate decided on by the EU, not individual countries. As part of Brexit, Theresa May wants to leave the customs union and form a separate customs agreement which would include no customs checks at the UK border for EU goods.'

I can't say I ever had any faith in Fox, he was useless in previous positions. Sadly the Cabinet was strategic rather than based on the best person for the job. If it wasn't for needing pro Brexit ministers I would really be struggling understanding how the likes of Fox & Hunt get any job.

What we need to know about the EUCU is how many of their trade deals matter to the UK. We can access them all but what if only 20 matter? Fox's number looks poor, and it probably is knowing him, but how many do we actually need to sort out?

WTO is the minimum and we trade on it with various nations as do everyone else but we must have a list of priorities to avoid WTO on.

Isn't the break up of the UK more a matter of when? NI is likely to go and Scotland will keep raising the issue no matter the devolution. Some won't want to go regardless but more people will end up being convinced there is less to lose as opposed to more to gain? NI people are going to lose a lot in joining ROI who don't seem that convinced they can afford to take them on...big EU grants may drag ROI back under the net payer line (that and the EU themselves kicking ROI over their low tax status).

May can strike a bilateral deal with the EU if a full CU isn't needed. But the EU will be keep to stop other countries connected to them making trade decisions hence they lock everyone in under a CU. It's is to prevent deficiency but you end up getting swallowed up in a big organisation when you are back of the queue behind the full members.

So, frictionless trade is only going to go so far. And frictionless trade is as much about the SM as it is the CU anyway as it's the SM that gives us more of the standards. Can her deal replicate that? I see people saying that prevents us setting our own standards but that's not strictly true as it just means we have a minimum standard and we can still work beyond that. Business deal with differing standards depending on where they sell. But will being locked into the EUCU force standards beyond their market into those they have trade agreements with?

Like those employment rights we are told are thanks to the EU yet the UK has higher standards than many EU states which tells us our unions are fighting for more despite what some may say that we will lose standards as the EU is the reason we have them (as if the trade union movement never took place ).

[MyNameIsTerry]

I've been following this so long that I finally gave up. Parliament cant agree on anything, Theresa May is promising to retire if they just approve and pass something, the dates keep changing....too much

I think a lot of them don't want too. They want to frustrate the process so it just fizzles out. They aren't exactly known for being in touch with the people.

They need to stop this and do what is best for the country as a whole. That isn't cancelling the whole thing and putting their heads in the sand over the issues that led us here.

[MyNameIsTerry]

There is a definate whiff about the Fiat-Tesla deal. A whiff of loop holes known that no one wants to talk about closing, brown envelopes with cash stuffed in them and favours being traded

How annoyed must VW be?!

I must remember this business tactic the next time someone is questioning fluctuations in performance between teams of people. I will simply suggest this new Fiat-Tesla Approach that says shove all the team together and take an average of what they are all doing and as long as the combined average is higher than the big boss wants, it doens't matter is team xyz sit with feet up half the day while team abc work their backsides off.

Is this the spawning of a green version of tax avoidance schemes? No accountants necessary, we have business consultants advising you to offset your carbon footprint by paying someone more green to sneak you over the green line?

As for slave labour, the black economy is something you may not always be aware of. When you go to one of these car washers that have sprung up you might have some poor sod working for peanuts doing your car. Or at your local take away or restaurant, a favourite black economy labour exchange.

Anything that helps report them is good. It's debatable how good it is for the individual immigrant who may face deportation back to someone far worse (France? ) but that's a separate issue, also involving a rather inept or suspiciously intentional incompetent immigration authority Now if only the Catholic Church could set up an app for us to report child abuse...

[MyNameIsTerry]

Terry…. Don’t you think that Mr Fox might have had his hands tied? If he’d have secured a heap of trade arrangements and been seen as successful in his job, surely that would have cut away much of the ground the remainers have been standing on. Their anti-Brexit *‘Export or Die’ argument might not have carried so much (spurious) weight. In fact, I would venture to say that Mrs May in taking control(!) of Brexit, aided and abetted by Whitehall, seems to have been sabotaging anything which looked vaguely useful in the Brexit process….

I wouldn't rule it out, May has hamstrung everyone in the negotiation role. But doesn't she have a bit of a rep as a micro manager? Regardless, I still think Fox is useless.

The plan was to grandfather in existing deals but there can be some problems with that as we have seen with people like the US who want their EU quota still applying to things even though they should lose the UK element with the EU and negotiate one with us. They wanted both a retention of the EU quota and a new equivalent of ours separate. If the EU don't have legislation for that regarding states that may exit the EU, and we've seen how bad A50 was, the Americans might have found themselves, via a clever legal eagle, a way to hold the EU to that. It doesn't perhaps effect us in this case but it does make me question what else other nations have thought about to squeeze the UK & EU out of this.

Again, it come back to who do we trade with? It doesn't matter if one of those 100 trade agreements if for French cheese or Polish plumbing services. I need to look some figures up, they are out there.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Brexit Day + 10

Mezz…. Where the theory of an EU bloc having the collective muscle to broker good deals with non-EU countries collapses is: i) the EU has its own isolationist policy to some degree and only trades on more favourable terms with those it wants to or has to (this is not necessarily bad, but it does limit trading partners) and ii) where a member state might find a national advantage in trading with non-EU X or Y or Z, that state cannot do so because such a deal would be blocked by the EU. This is protectionism (a pragmatic philosophy the EU pretends to eschew some of the time). What this means is that the EU collectively has to put the EU as an entity first; which is fine as long as all member states benefit equally. But member states are not treated equally. While some members get a very good return on their membership, others don’t. (Mrs Thatcher was forever trying to redress this and partially succeeded with her ‘rebate’ negotiated against considerable EU hostility in 1984 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate )

The break up of the UK…? The DUP sees significant protection for NI in being in the Union. If it wasn’t in the UK, it would inevitably be unable to resist re-unification into Ireland and a subsequent devolvement of power to RoI (with backing from the EU). But this could happen if the DUP accepts a permanent backstop (no hard border) arrangement as per the EU’s ultimatum as delivered through Mrs May’s deal (this being threatening behaviour dressed as diplomatic pragmatism – ‘This is the best and only solution; so you must accept it’). As I mentioned previously, in that situation who controls NI? Certainly not NI itself.

Perhaps it’s time to redefine the UK ‘Union’…? It could become a mini-Economic Community – a trading bloc independent of the EU – whereby England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have autonomy but work together…? There are a number of scenarios, any or none of which might be better than the current arrangement. (Maybe surprisingly for some folks, the UK is not wholly seen as either a good thing or desirable – a view held by not only some Welsh and Scots, but more English folks than you might imagine.)

Ooh, you federalist! An equal union? I think a far few Remainers would have liked that before the vote so they could keep flogging the "Scotland didn't vote out" nonsense (that reminds me, the National was on over the weekend)

It's the age old problem of voting boundaries. Give everyone an equal say and the next question is why 5% have an equal say as 70%. Wouldn't that mean we need to balance up the population? Or do we end up with a future Walloon situation? On the other hand, if you are in the smaller camp you get ignored. The same applies to money. London = the centre of the universe, the North = meh. It's why so many Scots are unhappy, I'm not sure they appreciate there are many areas of the UK in the exact same boat.

As regards the EU as a bloc, I don't think the national advantage issue stands up when one state comes to the Commission saying they can make more money if they have a trade deal with xyz as long as it doesn't impact on abc states. But it may advance over time to become an issue. However, the big players do use their weight as seniors to obtain just this. Germany gets the banks to bail it out whilst preventing the Greeks the same. Do we go a day without Macron waving his nob about?

But the question, for smaller states is, do we want that trade deal so bad we don't want all that lovely EU cash? Instead why don't we do what some people do and enjoy those paid benefits

[MyNameIsTerry]

Some import/export stuff from Del Boy's famous suitcase. This isn't about the importance of EU trade deals though.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41413558

So, what we have is:

- Scotland do well exporting whisky.
- 80% of the UK economy is Services so that's your number one priority (we heard so much about this and protecting London the first year but now it's died a death in the media for some reason )
- Exports to the Netherlands, and presumably imports, are an unknown quantity due to Rotterdam. The Chinese export a lot of stuff into the EU through there, something the EU probably aren't happy with as it's another loophole issue.
- We export a lot more Services than we import, and of our main imports in this sector the US is our main supplier.
- Most of what we export goes to the US (it's only when you add the EU countries together they over take them, and obviously we have a bigger relationship with Germany than anyone by quite a way).
- China is dominant in our import/export market.
- We do export a lot of vehicles but how much of that is because we are services contracts to specifically build for exportation?
- We export a lot of machinery but do we import any of the parts? If not, the issue is more at the other end with import duties.
- We export a few things that are unlikely to affected as much by standards such as semi-precious stones, fuel and drugs. These are likely dictated by their markets more than they are some commission standard as these standards are likely more global unless you 5mg Diazepam is not 5mg Diazepam unless we stamp EU 5mg assured on it
- The BBC have an interesting take on deficit. They claim we have a major deficit in goods partly offset by a small surplus on services. But we can see Services count for a lot more millions than those goods do. Thatcher's legacy.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Here we have the nations that represent the largest trade with the EU as a whole:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...European_Union

So, we have some nations there that don't match up to our national trade figures.

We have an interested Norway who are near the top in the EU trade list and high in the UK list for imports but not high in our list for exports. The US and China dominate everything. Switzerland are high up on EU trading figures but much lower in ours although we do export a significant amount to them. The rest seem off our radar. We do export quite a bit to ROI and import slightly less. Setting aside that we do need to work on this with ROI (As we do Norway and Switzerland) the ROI export more like 13.8% (2015, it was rising for years) of their economy to us.

So, we have more than one player interested in us and it's not Germany who we are very big on trade with. It is often rounded up into an EU all figure to suggest it's not much to them but that's as bad as rounding up into national figures and forgetting how trade is balanced in local economies at regional level and down to the town level. It's all well and good to argue the industry will survive but that's not the case for all the players. I doubt these smaller players (states) want to take that hit anymore than we do. What would that do to their economies overnight? I take it the EU would pump them full of more loans to balance them up further raising the issues regarding tensions in the EU and it's citizens.

So, if we have 100 trade deals the question is why aren't we really using them? Do a 100 deals really cover a small number of significant nations to us? Or can we strike new deals to compete with the EU? The EU are far bigger than us so can outbid us but...that's not strictly true if they have states in the same position as us where some of them trade more exclusively with certain countries. Or are the EU going to put one-upmanship first and offer cashbacks to those states that would lose out if they changed a current trade deal to make it more favourable to the nation they trade with whilst making the EU nations that most benefit (potentially a handful of states in this example) so that the industry losses are balanced out? And how popular will that be with their other states, who need to keep their own trade going to pay for their economies, let alone their citizens? Doesn't that create an imbalance issue? Hmm...they do like to throw money at people to buy their votes for deals or suggest pay outs may be "reassessed" if members start acting up (if we consider the Walloons again, and Poland for the latter).

This is where the detail is lost to we plebs. What do 100 deals do for us? It's an enormous number and very tempting but not if we never buy or sell of any what's in it. And does the EU even have trade deals with all those nations?

No, they don't as they are working on some of them at the moment. Some of these countries, like Commonwealth ones, we actually forced out by us joining the Common Market and have expressed an interest in trading more closely with us. Obviously, they will want things in return as will we and the spectre of immigration raises it's head in some cases.

We have this narrative that millions of deals are amazing...but I don't need car insurance if I don't have a car. "You must take out PPI with us, what if you become unemployed [insert doom & gloom hook here]".

[MyNameIsTerry]

List of EU trade deals:

https://fullfact.org/europe/how-many...EaAmS0EALw_wcB

Interestingly, they include their CU's and the EFTA parties (accessing the SM) in these 50 nations they have together. Lets bear in mind we can strike a deal with the EFTA as a whole which gives us a proportion of the nations counted in this. It also includes the EEA countries, lets bare in mind you join the EEA to access to SM or at least to be allowed access to the SM although you don't have to join it. This means we can negotiate in blocks with those too.

Do Turkey have much interest in us? The trade a lot with the EU but not with the UK. An example of an important trade deal, or a CU rather, that benefits us little.

Now something I've seen hardcore Remainers sneering over is the Commonwealth nations approaching us to re establish trade links. I've seen how their exports are sneered at Yet here we have a great big list of trade deals with far smaller nations and we have to question who in the EU is benefitting EU from them? This is where the devil is in the detail and the media don't really show us because they are likely small beer. For instance, what's our trade like with Papua New Guinea?

How much does our leaving impact on these nations?

So, does Fox need to prioritise bigger, more important nations or run around replacing 100's of trade deals with 50 nations?

[MyNameIsTerry]

The very short answer to the first of your questions, Terry, is: Yes! To the second I'd say if we can't come up with a straight answer, then your third question becomes impossible to answer and doesn't need to be asked.I believe most of Spain's exports are derived from agriculture - that makes it difficult to quantify them, because of the CAP and its obscure(d) subsidy system. Weighing like-for-like should be possible, but, again, not in the case of agriculture, food, fisheries and to some extent the services industry (misnomer!).

So, taking the plain overview, I believe joining the EEC(EU) set us on a road to disadvantage. It took away our manufacturing incentive by us joining an already skewed system (in favour of German, French and Italian manufacturing), and it created a decidedly unlevel playing field for agriculture, food and fisheries (which favours France, Spain and Italy having proportionally large agricultural economies). None of this touches on the ideology and philosophy of the EU - it's the straightforward(ish) trade situation very much simplified (as I see it in layman's terms).

Any other Custom's Union (accepting we'd be out of the current EU version) would still be biased in favour of the EU, unless we could negotiate one in our favour - an almost impossible task for as long as we're negotiating from the very weak position of being actually in the EU. The EU simply argues, quite logically, 'You're in a Custom's Union which works fine for the rest of us - comply and shut up, or clear off...'

Yes, the easing factors can be a pain. I remember dealing with these in my old line of work and we had to remove all that "noise" to get to the real numbers. The elec industry does similar things by spreading values over the number of connections. Gas seemed worse, it didn't even attempt to look at a potential average and just went with "anyone living here should use x" but in elec you couldn't do that given some people have a lot more devices these days, although the industry "easing" was more for other things regarding settlements and the error margins of them.

But it does distort things for us who are on the outside trying to understand what to do. Tony raised this thread for this very purpose I know I know a lot more now than before the referendum. So much of what we are discussing wasn't even touched on when presenting it to the public other than "we can sort it". You can't vote on this basis but it was what both campaigns did, traded in the mysterious with little explanation of anything and the lies about what we could do or what we could lose.

I agree about manufacturing. We are weak on it because we went that way and it gave us a lot of unhappy, unemployed people. We have a huge services industry that the other EU states would love but we are too global for them to take over. We have been told we need to retrain. Into services? From the coal mine to the hedge fund? The governments sought to make London everything and devalue other areas. They pushed for more imbalance. Now London has to provide more to prop the other up because they decided they wanted to place all the eggs in that basket.

Will we ever go back in time? I doubt it. Some industries have fought back though and it new ideas have come along e.g. the pottery industry, my local main economy along with coal & steel (hence you can imagine the economic impact of all those going), died but smaller businesses offering quality goods have sprung up.

True about the EU. They can play on fear of losing what you have, a powerful motivator. We are told how bad it will hit us but if you are a small country looking to set up a trade agreement with the EU are people saying "you will get swallowed by this giant" or thinking "great, more jobs"? Perhaps it suits our negativity?