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Re: Brexit
Today’s Times editorial
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/t...b1cb66bf062141
Quote:
Yesterday’s publication of the US trade negotiating guidelines for a deal bears out Sir Ivan’s warning.
The guidelines make clear that one of its chief objectives will be to secure access for American agricultural products to British markets and to eliminate “practices that unfairly decrease US market access opportunities or distort agricultural markets to the detriment of the US”. That is a clear warning that the United States will insist on Britain agreeing to the import of chlorine-washed chicken and genetically modified crops, prohibited at present under EU rules.
The guidelines also want a mechanism to enable the American administration “to take appropriate action if the UK negotiates a free trade agreement with a non-market country”. This could make it impossible for Britain to agree a trade deal with China, for example. It wants access to Britain’s government procurement markets while maintaining federal “buy America” programmes and ruling out British access to US state procurement markets.
This was one of the issues that sank trade negotiations between the EU and Washington in 2015. The guidelines even appear to want a say over British economic policies to ensure that we don’t manipulate sterling to gain an unfair competitive advantage.
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Quote:
There have been other recent reminders of the difficulties that Britain will face. So far the government has been able to roll over only six out of 33 EU trade deals to ensure continuity in the event of a no-deal Brexit and admitted last week that the EU-Japan deal won’t be rolled over in time.
Japan is stalling because it expects to secure better terms than it extracted from the EU. Meanwhile, the UK’s efforts to get agreement for its independent tariff schedules at the World Trade Organisation are being held up by 19 countries, including our allies Australia, New Zealand and Canada. They are unhappy with the agricultural quotas they have been offered under a provisional deal.
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Quote:
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The general rule of thumb in trade negotiations is that big, rich countries, such as America, China and Japan, extract more favourable terms when dealing with smaller nations. No one wants to be pessimistic about future trade deals, but it is wise to be realistic.
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This is not “Project Fear", this is the reality 4 weeks before we leave the EU.
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