Anti-Brexit scaremongering fail: Australia Seeks Free Trade Talks with UK
Prime Minister May: “This shows that we can make Brexit work for Britain”
The Brexit vote that resulted in David Cameron stepping down has also prompted a range of apocolyptic fear-mongering that British trade would collapse.
In fact, numerous countries are beginning to explore free trade deals with Britain after its EU exit. With the 2019 date for Britain’s exit from the EU looming, the United States and Australia have emerged “at the front of queue” to line up trade deals. Such deals with just these two countries “alone could be worth billions of pounds to the British economy.”
Australia, in particular, sees the opportunity to open up trading with Britain as a “matter of urgency.”
Australia has called for a free-trade deal with Britain as soon as possible, in a boost for the newly appointed prime minister, Theresa May.
In a phone call on Saturday, May spoke to her Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, who expressed his desire to open up trading between the two countries as a matter of urgency.
For her part, May states her belief that these talks are important in terms of showing that Brexit can work out well for Britons.
The ability to negotiate individual free trade deals was part of the motivation for Brexit:
The Guardian continues:
May described the call with Turnbull as very encouraging and insisted it showed leaving the European Union could work for Britain. She has asked the new international trade secretary, Liam Fox, to begin exploring options but acknowledged that Britain could not sign any deals while it was still an EU member.
May said: “I have been very clear that this government will make a success of our exit from the European Union. One of the ways we will do this is by embracing the opportunities to strike free trade deals with our partners across the globe. It is very encouraging that one of our closest international partners is already seeking to establish just such a deal.
“This shows that we can make Brexit work for Britain, and the new secretary of state for international trade will be taking this forward in the weeks and months ahead. Britain is an outward-looking and globally minded country, and we will build on this as we forge a new role for ourselves in the world.”
Britain cannot enter into an official trade deal with any country outside the EU until it officially leaves in 2019.
Britain is barred from striking individual trade deals until it officially leaves the EU, which is set to be a lengthy and complicated process that will take up to two years once Article 50 – thee formal process for leaving – is triggered.
But Mr Fox hopes to have agreed the terms of new trade deals with countries beforehand so they could take effect immediately after Britain is no longer an EU member state.
Mrs May appointed Mr Fox, a prominent Brexit campaigner, to drum up new trade deals with non-EU countries around the world as part of her wide-ranging Cabinet reshuffle last week.
However, splits among senior government ministers started to emerge over the weekend over when Britain should trigger Article 50.
David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, wants Britain to start the formal process of leaving the EU this year to enable the UK to start life outside the Brussels club from January 1 2019.
If Britain shows it can make it alone, expect others to follow.
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Comments
Now the negotiations really begin.
This is the beginning of a new trade empire. India, Australia and Canada are back in the fold.
Aaaaannnnda the Eeyores of LI commentators bite another big one!
May has done what she was mandated by the referendum to do, and her cabinet picks say she will continue.
As the Brexit supporters claimed, Britain can do just fine with the old commonwealth, in fact it would have a hefty portion of its current trade taken care of via Australia, Canada, America, New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Japan, which heavily favors the Anglo-sphere. Smaller, but current trading partners such as Kenya, Tanzania,Nigeria, Zambia and many Caribbean countries already have unaffected trading agreements.
The way they’re poncing about, they must think that commerce (with or without “deals”) is something invented and patented by the EU. We’re seeing an entire country play the game of “I’ll start looking for a job … tomorrow.” It’s spelled “tomorrow”, but it’s pronounced “never”. For Brexit, two years is “never”. The crisis is now; the escape should be, too. They have to get off Terra Magica before they all turn into donkeys.
While I think Brexit was a very good idea – to be rid of one’s cancerous growth – and the reckless media’s fear mongering outlandish I see what happens next as extremely critical to liberty, to sustained growth and to stability.
Britain may have chosen freedom from the EU but May have no clue as to how to use it. Impulsiveness seems to be common malady throughout the world, including the U.S., and correlated directly to the media’s pulse and to nothing of lasting value.
http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/Theresa-May-is-a-failed-Home-Secretary-8181
(I am a subscriber to The New Criterion. You may hit a pay wall when you click on the link. Sorry. I recommend subscribing to the The New Criterion.)
Isn’t she the same coot who said the UK should wait and see if Scotland wants to have another referendum and wait for the outcome of it until they trigger Article 50?
Not exactly. Number 10 is denying these claims made by Scotland’s First Minister who wants to see if some sort of deal can be worked out whereby Scotland stays in both the UK and the EU (so Britain exits without Scotland, but Scotland is still part of the UK).
As far as a second independence referendum: that seems very likely and could take place next year.
The question, though, is whether the clock will simply run out on Prime Minister May’s activation of Article 50 in time to manifest Brexit. She has stated that she wants to do so, but that she also wants Scotland sorted out. How sincere are her assertions that she will move forward with Brexit . . . anyone’s guess.
Britain is frantically working to set up independent (from the EU) trade agreements with various nations, including the U. S. and Australia. Reports are that as many as 12 nations have either approached Britain (South Korea, as an example) or been approached to do so. This could be posturing, but I don’t think that’s likely.
We’ll know soon enough, though. Two years is the blink of an eye for something this complicated and involving so many governments.
The easiest way for Scotland to stay in the EU would be to secede from the UK and join a loose union with Ireland. Then they could take their time negotiating an amicable dissolution of that union, providing that both parts remain in the EU.
Well, with Northern Ireland, anyway. The problem, though, is that Scotland wants to both stay in the EU and stay in the UK. And with good reason. How, for instance, would this loose Scotland-Ireland union determine a head of state? What of their support from the UK in terms of the National Health Service, national security/the military, revenue, and on and on?
Not that there wouldn’t be problems with remaining a part of the UK and also being in the EU. Border issues are the first thing that come to mind, but the EU has been expanding its reach, scope, influence, and authority over member nations (“unexpectedly”), and Scotland/Ireland without the heft of the UK would be steam-rolled.
The second independence referendum will clarify not only what Scots want but how they will manage things like national defense, national security, their economy, and etc. If they left the UK and stayed in the EU, they may decide to adopt things that Britain refused (the Euro, various other areas related to national sovereignty). As the EU will eventually develop, should it not crumble first, a right to declare war, levy taxes, and other things a central government can do, a move to split from the UK seems like a bad idea that would leave Scotland and Northern Ireland open to all sorts of abuses. But then, I’m not a fan of the EU.
The lyrics to a popular song are “got along without you before i met you, gonna get along without you now”. Actually they got along without the rest of Europe for a couple of thousand years and their ties to America proved most valuable. Why would anyone think of them as helpless dependents is beyond me. Their immigration policy seemed to be working very well when most were eastern Europeans but went off the rails with large scale muslim immigration.