"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
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On 17/12/2018 22:33, Tim J wrote:


"bert" wrote in message


If our initial schedule is the same as the EUs they cannot veto it. They
cannot veto out of political malice.

They dont get to veto any schedule. The UK is free to have
any schedule it likes just as long as it has the same tariff for
all countries that do not have a trade agreement, as her
original quote said correctly.

I think they would stuill play silly buggers.

But doing that has no effect. Any WTO signatory can do what
it likes with the tariffs it has as long as it applies the same tariff
to imports from all countries unless there is a trade agreement
with that country.

For example they could yell "unfair farming subsidies = virtual import
tarriff on French food" and claim we were iunfairtly disadvantaging them.

No WTO rule against that. That is after all what tariffs
are about, protecting local industry, or agriculture in
that sense. That is in fact precisely what the EU tariffs
on agricultural imports do and there is nothing in the
WTO rules that disallows that. The WTO does attempt
to encourage lower tariffs, but any signatory country
is free to set whatever tariffs it likes just as long as they
apply to all imports in the absence of a trade agreement.

Cf Chinese 'dumping' ,

Dumping is a different issue to tariffs and the UK
doesnt do dumping. The EU did with some stuff,
particularly with the surplus CAP production, but
even then, the WTO can't stop that from happening
and no WTO country has any veto on any schedule.

Or any other product that gets state aod. E.g. UK nuclear power exported
to them

The WTO gets no say on that either.

There is endless opportunity to break the spirit of the rules if not the
letter.

But the reality, as currently seen with Trump and his punitive
tariffs that only apply to China, there is in fact nothing the
WTO can do about that except stamp its foot about it.

The poit is that e EU is not, despite a veru close prior and corrupt
relatioship, the sameas Eurobusiness. Euroebusiness pays the EU to deliver
a captive market,

And thats fine under the WTO rules.

Britai looks set to break free. Eurobusiness may well abandon the EU if it
hasn't delivered.

Unlikely that they will IMO, but for other reasons.
German industry particularly benefits very greatly
from the effective devaluation it gets by being
the most successful economy in the eurozone
and Airbus wouldnt be viable out of the EU.
Italian industry wont abandon the EU either,
because its banks are so fragile and they need to
be bailed out by the EU. No one else will do that.

Nokia is now a very pale shadow of what it once was
and Ikea will continue to do fine for other reasons.