Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre
You have no idea? trade is very simple, someone has something sell, someone has money to buy. As ass the sellers terms and the buyers terms are met they will trade. I believe it has been going on for many thousands of years now.
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Trade agreements are not that simple though which is why they take so long to create. The bigger the parties involved the more complicated it gets. It's not just a case of '
we'll sell you Scotch, in return we'll buy Levi jeans' although that gets incredibly difficult as different industries within the respective nations jockey for protections e.t.c. It's also demanding political action from the governments involved. So maybe we want to ensure 'Scotch' is a protected term and want legal assurances from the other nation that their government will take action against anyone within their country from using that term for their own, non-Scottish, whisky makers. Maybe a nation wants copyright laws toughened, almost certainly regulations need to be changed and so on.
It's all very well saying 'I have something to sell, you have money to buy it' but we're dealing with billions of pounds worth of goods moving back and forth between different regulatory and legal environments. Especially when governments don't want their citizens buying from foreign rivals but simultaneously want to protect the right of their businesses to sell to foreign governments.