Originally posted by vetran
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Pretty much like the Middle East and the Western world. Maybe Brexiters could start their own version of the Taliban or IS...“Brexit is having a wee in the middle of the room at a house party because nobody is talking to you, and then complaining about the smell.” -
Oh dear. You said 10% on goods . Never mentioned services. It was a polite request as to the source of your 10% figure. I guess you don't have one as, after skimming the WTO figures, it would appear rates vary, but the majority are below 10%. Still feel free to correct me, via Google or otherwise.Originally posted by sasguru View Post
Oh and I've never fixed a washing machine in my life.Comment
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May told to start Brexit
Oh dear
Business Live: iPhone reaction - BBC News
"Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, has told Theresa May that he wants her to start the Brexit process "as soon as possible".
Mr Tusk, who was meeting the Prime Minister at Downing Street ahead of a meeting of the 27 members of the European Union, also told Mrs May that "the ball is now in your court".
The Prime Minister faced tough talk over Brexit at the recent G20 summit in China.
President Obama said the US would prioritise trade talks with the EU and Pacific nations over the UK while Japan warned of "drastic changes"."Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience". Mark TwainComment
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TTIP is dead because of the impossibility of agreeing a trade deal with 27 countries so the door is now open for the UK to form its own trade deal with the USA. Japans warning was to the entire EUOriginally posted by scooterscot View PostLet us not forget EU open doors immigration benefits IT contractors more than anyoneComment
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Britain is falling into denial about Brexit - FT.com
Leave supporters view an EU deal as an event. In truth, it will be a long, tortuous process British prime minister Theresa May at the G20 summit in Hangzhou hat was all the fuss about? The sun is still shining, the economy is growing and Scotland has not seceded. It is time for pro-European doomsters to admit it: Brexit was good for Britain. Now the world awaits its return as a truly “sovereign” nation.
All that remains is for Theresa May’s government to step up the pace of negotiations in order to sever ties with Brussels sooner rather than later.
So says the prevailing mood nearly three months after the popular vote to take Britain out of the EU. One could quibble with the detail. The latest rises in some economic indicators reflect a reversal of earlier post-Brexit falls rather than a sign of a coming boom. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that business is holding back on investment. The public finances are set to worsen. As for the fall of sterling,
well, yes, it has made exports cheaper, but at the expense of lowering living standards. The nation once jeered when a former Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, claimed devaluation did not hit the pound in voters’ pockets.
No matter. Hubristic denial is the order of the day. In any event, an argument about the immediate impact of the vote misses the point. The Brexiters now trumpeting a bright independent future see departure from the EU as an event. In truth it will be a long, tortuous process — a slow burn, if you like, with costs, economic and political, that will reach well into coming decades.
To make such an obvious point is not to talk Britain down: the fact that things seem fine now says next to nothing about the consequences along the road.
Mrs May was reminded of this as she cut a rather lonely figure in meetings with other leaders at the G20 gathering in Hangzhou. No, the US will not put Britain at the head of the queue for future trade deals. And yes, Japanese companies will step back from investing in the UK if the government takes it out of the EU single market. Allies and trading partners are at one in concluding Britain will be diminished by Brexit. A few kind words from the Australian government are scant consolation.
To to be fair to Mrs May, word in Whitehall has it that she understands the scale and complexity of the challenge. When she tells the House of Commons that she has no intention of prematurely showing her negotiating hand, what she really means is that she does not yet have such a hand. The media fanfare surrounding a lengthy cabinet discussion about Brexit at Chequers, the prime minister’s country house, belied the absence of any substantive convergence towards strategic objectives. It was, by the accounts of those present, a less than enlightening conversation.
Among the decisions deferred were when Britain should begin formal negotiations by triggering Article 50 of the EU treaties; where it should seek to strike a balance between retaining access to the single market and regaining national authority over the movement of EU citizens; and whether it should cut cross-channel trade ties decisively by leaving the EU customs union. My guess on the first of these is that the logic of the electoral calendar will persuade Mrs May to opt for the first quarter of the next year. The next election is due in mid-2020. Working back, the government will want to leave an interval before polling day in case of economic turbulence. This suggests a two-year negotiation ending before the summer of 2019 — the date, as it happens, of the next elections to the European Parliament.
Decisions two and three — the single market and the customs union — are much tougher. Here, the Brexiters in the cabinet continue to take an obstinately old-fashioned view of trade: the EU sells more to Britain than vice versa so Mrs May is certain to get a good deal. We no longer, though, live in a world where products made in one country are simply shipped to another, leaving tariffs as the only thing that matters. Business is now defined by intricate, cross-border supply chains in which the finished product more often has multiple origins. What matters — as the Japanese government explained in its excellent assessment of the impact of Brexit — is that these chains
are frictionless both in terms of standards and regulation as well as tariffs. If Britain stays in the single market it has to accept free movement of labour — a political red line for the government — and if it remains
part of the customs union it loses the opportunity to negotiate bilateral trade deals with third countries, putting Liam Fox, the newly appointed trade minister, out of a job. Yet stepping outside of these arrangements also takes Britain out of all those multinational supply chains with the concomitant cost in terms of trade, investment and employment.
Philip Hammond, the chancellor, has been quicker than colleagues to grasp the risks and trade-offs, particularly, but not solely, for the financial services industry. Mr Hammond is one of those unflashy and underrated politicians who rises to the top almost by stealth. Now he has the role he has always coveted.
He is struggling, though, to get a hearing for something a little more sophisticated than “let’s just leave”. Too many colleagues have been swept up in the so-called post-Brexit bounce. They are deaf to warnings from the Treasury — or for that matter from Washington or Tokyo.
This is not a process promising anything resembling a happy ending."A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices," George OrwellComment
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"This is not a process promising anything resembling a happy ending. "
Quite so. Listening to Michael Gove in parliament a couple of days ago I came to the conclusion that all arts/humanities/classics graduates should have some scientific/evidential STEM training.Hard Brexit now!
#prayfornodealComment
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Is this FT that said the UK should join the EURO? The great euro swindle - Telegraph
The central historical error of the modern Financial Times concerns the euro. The FT flung itself headlong into the pro-euro camp, embracing the cause with an almost religious passion. Doubts were dismissed. Here is the paper's Lex column on January 8, 2001, on the subject of Greek entry to the eurozone: "With Greece now trading in euros," reflected Lex, "few will mourn the death of the drachma. Membership of the eurozone offers the prospect of long-term economic stability." The FT offered a similarly warm welcome to Ireland.
The paper waged a vendetta against those who warned that the euro would not work. Its chief political columnist, Philip Stephens, consistently mocked the Eurosceptics. "Immaturity is the kind explanation," sneered Stephens as Tory leader William Hague came out against the single currency.
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Even as late as May 2008, when the fatal booms in Ireland and elsewhere were very obviously beginning to falter, the paper retained its faith: "European monetary union is a bumble bee that has taken flight," asserted the newspaper's leader column. "However improbable the celestial design, it has succeeded in real life." For a paper with pretensions to authority in financial matters, its coverage of the single currency can be regarded as nothing short of a disaster.
Let us not forget EU open doors immigration benefits IT contractors more than anyoneComment
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Britain faces long road to post-Brexit trade deals | Reuters
The EU will be powerful even when Britain is negotiating with countries not in the EU.
Watching how May and co sort things out is going to be very interesting.A senior diplomat from a developed country with which Britain has suggested negotiating a deal said the EU was a more important partner, so any deal with Britain would depend on how it affected his country's trade with the EU.
I'm alright JackComment
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Is this the same Telegraph that in 2010 predicted the death of the Euro in 5 years?Originally posted by DodgyAgent View Post
Euro 'will be dead in five years' - Telegraph
And yet here we are, with the pound now at near parity to the "failing" Euro.
To be fair joing the Euro was never a good idea, something I've been consistent on since 1999, but Brexit is an even worse one, economically.Hard Brexit now!
#prayfornodealComment
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On the contraryOriginally posted by BlasterBates View PostBritain faces long road to post-Brexit trade deals | Reuters
The EU will be powerful even when Britain is negotiating with countries not in the EU.
Watching how May and co sort things out is going to be very interesting.
The EU's retreat from US trade deal leaves the field to Britain
They’ve managed it. The naysayers have succeeded in killing off what would have been the first trade deal signed between the world’s two biggest economic blocs.
“TTIP”, or the Transatlantic Trading and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US, was meant to be part of the plan for a renewed, competitive Europe, helping its indebted economies to carry the deadening weight of the euro. Instead, it is becoming a potent symbol of EU dysfunction.
After years of protests, petitions and successful peddling of terrifying myths about the deadly threat this deal posed to rights, democracy, safety and the environment, European politicians are capitulating. EU mandarins are trying to keep it together in the face of a tough US stance and competing demands by 27 countries but, in the crystal clear estimation of French trade minister Matthias Fekl, the deal is “dead”.
The Eurocrats will continue to insist that, like a convalescent dictator, it is very much alive and well. But to be sure, it is simply resting! Taking the air! But they know as well as anyone else that TTIP - and the useful €120 billion boost they said it would bring the EU economy - is at best being put into a long, deep freeze.
The good news, of course, is that this clears that enormous “queue” for trade deals with the US that Barack Obama was warning us about when he visited Britain before the EU referendum. A post-Brexit UK, he said, would be “at the back” of this queue, and at the G20 last week, he again declared that a UK-US deal won’t be a priority. With TTIP dead, however, there is no queue. Saying that Britain is at the back of it is rather like saying that Mr Obama is at the back of the queue of lame duck US presidents leaving office: he’s also at the front of it.
Any decision on trading terms between the US and its allies will be down to Mr Obama’s successor. Pessimists argue that the anti-globalisation mood taking hold across the pond will preclude any deal making. Donald Trump has demonised trade and even Hillary Clinton has gone lukewarm. But although there is a worrying rise in such hostility, there are reasons to think that Brexit Britain can slip around this roadblock.
The multilateral, sprawling agreements currently running into problems, like TTIP and its Pacific equivalent, are totemic, regional pacts with explicitly geopolitical aims. They are agreed only after torturous negotiations between dozens of countries with different cultures and priorities. They establish remote – and therefore scary-sounding – new regulatory and legal systems and the backlash against them feeds on the idea of a faceless, nationless technocratic class taking over the levers of power at the expense of citizens.
By contrast, a single-country deal with a reliable ally, whose legal system and economy already have much in common with the US, is a less threatening prospect and is unlikely to worry former car workers in Detroit. That is one of the reasons that Mr Trump can insouciantly declare that Britain would certainly not be “at the back of the queue” for a deal, as he did in May.
Mr Trump might not be the most reliable ally. But there are geopolitical reasons why it would make sense for the US to consider a deal, especially if Mrs Clinton wins. It would signal that the UK, a useful US ally in Europe, is not out in the cold. It would help, in a less ostentatious way than TTIP, to expand the sway of economic relations based on the rule of law and regulations, rather than the rule of might favoured by Russia and China. It would also establish a framework to which the EU would hopefully be added in future decades.
A tailor-made deal between Brexit Britain and the US could deliver more gains than TTIP. Although our negotiating power would be weaker than that of the whole EU bloc, British priorities like the inclusion of financial services would form a larger part of any agreement. By the same token, we would avoid the dysfunction generated by the bizarre foibles of 27 different countries, like France’s insistence that its vintners must retain the exclusive right to use the term “champagne”.
More broadly, a deal with the US would be a powerful symbol that Britain is still flying the flag for openness in a western world wracked by doubt. It would signal that although the country is anxious about the scale of recent immigration, it is not joining the ranks of fearful protectionists. Support for free trade has, in fact, remained remarkably strong in the UK for over a century.
In much of the rest of Europe, free trade has a bad name. That made it easy for activists to argue that TTIP was a plot to let corporations block inconvenient government policies by suing them. The deal, in fact, explicitly enshrines governments’ rights to regulate in the public interest, whether it’s for the NHS, workers’ rights or the environment.
The UK is already a party to nearly 100 treaties that let companies settle disputes internationally. Britain has never lost a case in these courts, but UK companies have won 43 cases against other states for arbitrary actions like property expropriation.
So TTIP would not have destroyed democracy. Nor would it have been a panacea. But it would have been a helpful move towards a more competitive EU and a more open global economy. It might be dead, but outside the EU, Britain’s trading ambitions need not die with it.Let us not forget EU open doors immigration benefits IT contractors more than anyoneComment
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