In article ,
Roger Mills writes:
On 17/06/2016 12:54, Andy Burns wrote:
Mark Allread wrote:

I just picked up a snippet of information showing that those who said the
UK is already negotiating its own trade deals is wrong as we aren't
allowed to do so whilst in the EU.

This means that we currently have no trade deal with USA, NZ, Australia,
China or India to name but a few.

We are still a member of WTO (twice in fact, directly as the UK where we
pay the membership fees, and indirectly as a member of the EU where no
fees are paid) so that would give as a basic trade deal with other WTO
members.

But it wouldn't be a *free* trade deal, we'd have to re-negotiate those,
the two years for the EU exit process is rather short for the usual
negotiations, but the carrot to the EU to get their finger out would be
continuing to sell their cars (and windmills, etc) to us without duty
slapped on the price.

It's *much* more important for the EU to ensure that we fail if we're
outside the EU than it is to sell extra German cars to us. Failure to
ensure we struggle outside the EU will lead to rapid collapse of the whole
EU, something the commission knows only too well. In any case, even without
any duty, German cars will almost certainly become significantly more
expensive as the pound slides.

(I think the EU will eventually collapse either way, but I'd much rather
we were a key part of repairing it than outside it.)

As I understand it, you don't *have* to have trade deals in order to
trade with other countries - but it sometimes helps.

You need trade deals if you want duty-less trade.
There's a duty applied to many goods imported from the US, and they
do likewise to many goods we export to them. Also, the regulatory
issues make that more expensive for manufacturers, as individual
trade deals each have to meet completely different product standards,
which is not the case in the EU free trade area due to standards
harmonisation.

Again, as I understand it, neither the UK nor the EU currently has a
trade deal with the USA - this is what TTIP is all about, but hasn't yet
been agreed. But we *still* do a lot of trade with the US.

[As far as I can see, TTIP would be bad news for us anyway - so if we're
not in the EU at the time when it's finally agreed, so much the better!]

I don't think there's any chance the EU countries will agree to TTIP
as currently leaked. I would be much more concerned about our
government agreeing to it if we're outside the EU.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]