“Britain is finding out just how hard it can be to negotiate free trade deals, even with close allies and friends.
Nearly eight years after Brexit campaigners persuaded a slim majority to vote to leave the European Union, on a platform that included promises of a brighter future as a global trading nation, the UK government has walked away from talks to replace its legacy EU trade deal with Canada over disputes involving beef, cars and cheese.
UK carmakers, which currently pay low or no import taxes when exporting to Canada, could face much higher taxes from April.
Meanwhile, rules governing the export of British cheese to Canada expired in December. Now, UK producers selling to Canada face
paying tariffs of up to 245% of the value of their cheese.
The stalled talks represent a “blow” to the UK’s ambitions to strike better trade deals now that it is outside of the EU, according to David Henig, a director of UK trade policy at the Brussels-based European Centre for International Political Economy.
“We won’t get an improved deal, we’ll actually have worse trading conditions than we did as EU members,” he told CNN.
Canada has played hardball for a long time. It was always going to come to a crunch point as to who was going to capitulate.”
Ffs, I thought these were all oven ready.
If only someone warned them.
Canada lays down a royal flush. You look at your own hand: Mr Bun the Baker, A Shadowmage, Pickachu, a fireball spell and the fool.
Good if it’s a shit deal why should we accept, they will come back to the table. We will probably just copy the EU trade deal this was like extra shit.
Who cares, it’s better that we sell our own produce here to our own people, I’ve heard Remainacs moaning about empty shelves
Job done
Far as I know it’s the USA that goes in for hormones in beef and chlorine chickens. But also way back when UK joined EU/EEC, many Commonwealth countries suddenly found they could not sell to UK (eg New Zealand lamb) and had to scramble to find other markets, which they did, more or less. Now UK wants back in, hmm.. not going to be easy. Canadian Dairy cartel is very strong, probably to avoid dumping by USA surplus dairy products.
This was actually a good decision by our otherwise horrific government.
If Canadian beef does not meet our standards and it’s a sticking point for them then it is better we walk away rather than lowering the standards. It also sends a signal to the US that we wont budge.
On the Cheese issue I am split. According to Canadians their cheese is not good and their dairy farmers are powerul and wealthy, which means this would be less about British cheese destroying small time Canadian farmers and instead about shaving a percentange off the top of what are essentially wealthy companies.
I think Britain needs to find what type of products it wants to define ourselves. We can’t build an economy on the back of cheese. Now advertising our deals as high end or high quality food and beverage is a good idea, we have fantastic alcohol, condiments, cheese etc but we also happily sell of our successful companies like Cadburys.
We could have gained a larger percentage of the defence industry but we didn’t and so France did. We could have gained more of the Space industry but we didn’t and again France did. We could have gained more of the tech industry but we didn’t and East Asia did. We constantly have promising starts but the governments hands off approach and lack of support means it either goes no where, or does get big and then sold abroad.
Like recently our largest engineering company was bought by a US rival, another engineering company is in talks, morrisons sold to an American private equity company. I think there are abouy 75 billions pounds of foreign purchases of British companies happening which is like 2.1% of our GDP. Madness.
7 comments
“Britain is finding out just how hard it can be to negotiate free trade deals, even with close allies and friends.
Nearly eight years after Brexit campaigners persuaded a slim majority to vote to leave the European Union, on a platform that included promises of a brighter future as a global trading nation, the UK government has walked away from talks to replace its legacy EU trade deal with Canada over disputes involving beef, cars and cheese.
UK carmakers, which currently pay low or no import taxes when exporting to Canada, could face much higher taxes from April.
Meanwhile, rules governing the export of British cheese to Canada expired in December. Now, UK producers selling to Canada face
paying tariffs of up to 245% of the value of their cheese.
The stalled talks represent a “blow” to the UK’s ambitions to strike better trade deals now that it is outside of the EU, according to David Henig, a director of UK trade policy at the Brussels-based European Centre for International Political Economy.
“We won’t get an improved deal, we’ll actually have worse trading conditions than we did as EU members,” he told CNN.
Canada has played hardball for a long time. It was always going to come to a crunch point as to who was going to capitulate.”
Ffs, I thought these were all oven ready.
If only someone warned them.
Canada lays down a royal flush. You look at your own hand: Mr Bun the Baker, A Shadowmage, Pickachu, a fireball spell and the fool.
Good if it’s a shit deal why should we accept, they will come back to the table. We will probably just copy the EU trade deal this was like extra shit.
Who cares, it’s better that we sell our own produce here to our own people, I’ve heard Remainacs moaning about empty shelves
Job done
Far as I know it’s the USA that goes in for hormones in beef and chlorine chickens. But also way back when UK joined EU/EEC, many Commonwealth countries suddenly found they could not sell to UK (eg New Zealand lamb) and had to scramble to find other markets, which they did, more or less. Now UK wants back in, hmm.. not going to be easy. Canadian Dairy cartel is very strong, probably to avoid dumping by USA surplus dairy products.
This was actually a good decision by our otherwise horrific government.
If Canadian beef does not meet our standards and it’s a sticking point for them then it is better we walk away rather than lowering the standards. It also sends a signal to the US that we wont budge.
On the Cheese issue I am split. According to Canadians their cheese is not good and their dairy farmers are powerul and wealthy, which means this would be less about British cheese destroying small time Canadian farmers and instead about shaving a percentange off the top of what are essentially wealthy companies.
I think Britain needs to find what type of products it wants to define ourselves. We can’t build an economy on the back of cheese. Now advertising our deals as high end or high quality food and beverage is a good idea, we have fantastic alcohol, condiments, cheese etc but we also happily sell of our successful companies like Cadburys.
We could have gained a larger percentage of the defence industry but we didn’t and so France did. We could have gained more of the Space industry but we didn’t and again France did. We could have gained more of the tech industry but we didn’t and East Asia did. We constantly have promising starts but the governments hands off approach and lack of support means it either goes no where, or does get big and then sold abroad.
Like recently our largest engineering company was bought by a US rival, another engineering company is in talks, morrisons sold to an American private equity company. I think there are abouy 75 billions pounds of foreign purchases of British companies happening which is like 2.1% of our GDP. Madness.