Reply to post: Re: Ha

Re: Ha

sed gawk,

Firstly the USA itself exports food into the EU now. How can that be possible if its supply is contaminated? Obviously the downside of allowing rules for our internal market to differ from Single Market rules are that our exporters may be forced to do more paperwork, in order to prove their supply chains comply - and this would make exporting more expensive. Although one of the big upsides of leaving the EU is the opportunity to allow food into our market at much lower prices - as we're no longer required to protect the interests of the french and other EU farming lobbies with high tarrifs. The downside of that is the damage to our own farming industry - so as with everything it's a trade-off. But the ability to offer our internal food market is also a lure for trade negotiations, including with the EU themselves - and the upside is cheaper food. We don't have to take chlorinated chicken if we don't want to, though equally I'm not convinced it's that much of a horror, given that the same process is already used in the EU for salads, and I believe soon to be allowed for chicken? But we can always insist that it be labelled, and then consumers can make their own choice.

The point is though that this becomes a choice we get to make as voters. Economically, the best thing to do is probably totally free trade - take the advantages of cheaper imports and let the competition strengthen our own companies. The more efficient your companies, the richer the country. But politically that's an impossible sell - and the short-term pain would be high. So even if it's the best long-term policy, as Keynes said, "in the long term we're all dead."

So yes the US will be seeking lots of things from any trade deal. If you don't ask - you don't get. They'll ask and if we don't give all they want, they'll not give us some stuff we want. This is normal in trade deals, and is why they take so long to negotiate, as different political/economic interests play off against each other.

But Rome wasn't built in a day, and constructing a brand new trade policy will take years. As a first step, constructing a few easy but shallow trade deals might be a good idea. Doing anything deep and complex is bound to take longer.

I guess the problem here is the "all or nothing" pisspoor quality of so much of the Brexit debate. If you only read the Guardian, it's an absolute outrage if the government doesn't accept every demand made by the European Commission negotiating team - and any demands our government make in return are unreasonable red lines caused by Brexiteer idiots trying to "have their cake and eat it". Meanwhile ignoring that the EU are trying exactly the same thing, because who doesn't want to get concessions from the other side in a negotiation at zero cost?

One of the things that happens in any negotiation is that you find out what the other side's real "red lines" are as you go, and where they're prepared to be flexible. As the EU discovered, where even when May capitulated to the withdrawal agreement, because she thought a no deal exit would be a disaster, she was still unable to get it through Parliament. But after negotiation Johnson removed a bunch of the more unacceptable bits, and hey presto! An agreement! Even though it contained elements the EU had told May were literally impossible.

Now the currrent EU policy is to say that we must submit to EU law, as interpreted by EU courts, in perpetuity. That's simply ludicrous and more than they demand of Canada - who they recently signed a similar agreement with. Is that really what they expect? Or is it what they want? In my opinion is so extreme as to poison the negotiations, and in fact it has. We're likely to end up signing a much shallower agreement (if we even get one) because of it. Johnson has deliberately decided to go for the minimum trade deal, he thinks actually possible to agree. Despite the fact that industry on both sides would like something a lot closer.

By being so hostile the EU have destroyed the political chances of the very people in the UK who would be most sympathetic to what they want. Clearly the obvious compromise after a narrow vote to leave was either continuing membership of the Single Market or something a bit looser than that which allowed the UK some control of immigration policy. Sadly too many people on the remain side gambled everything on reversing the referndum result, rather than settling on a compromise position that most people could live with. While the EU hollowed out the centre ground even further by making continuous shrill demands for everything on their terms - thus undermining any chance for the very compromises they wanted us to make.