The EU benefits from being one of the most open economies in the world and remains committed to free trade.
Over the next ten to 15 years, 90% of world demand will be generated outside Europe. That is why it is a key priority for the EU to tap into this growth potential by opening up market opportunities for European businesses abroad. One way of ensuring this is through negotiating agreements with our key partners.
Funny old thing…it looks like the BBC’s Kamal Ahmed is a one man hit squad for the Remain camp out to neutralise any Leave campaign ‘good news’.
We’ve already noted his immediate rebuttal to Steve Hilton’s claim that all economic forecasts about Brexit are so much bunk and now as James Dyson tells us that it is ‘cobblers’ that the EU won’t trade with us Kamal again slips in a spoiler. Just a week or so ago he was painting a gloomy picture of the economy on Brexit…
All the different effects are actually derived from one significant starting point – that the economy would be smaller if the UK left the EU relative to where it would be if “remain” won on June 23.
On this issue, with varying degrees of pessimism, there is widespread – though not total – agreement among economic institutions from the International Monetary Fund to the Bank of England.
On trade, most economists agree that moving out of the single market will negatively effect Britain’s economic relationship with what is left of the EU.
It is also argued that British exporters will find it difficult to replace that trade by increasing economic links with countries such as America and China, particularly in the first few years.
Now, with the famous and credible billionaire businessman Dyson rubbishing claims that trade will stop Kamal changes his tune…Brexit – and stay in the single market? Here’s how. However, this being the pro-EU BBC, it’s not that simple as a seemingly pro-Brexit piece still pushes the ‘Brexit is a huge risk’ scenario the solution to which is still in doubt…
Today, Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minister, appeared to say as much – a vote for Brexit is also a vote for leaving the single market, and all its advantages. “If the majority in Britain opts for Brexit, that would be a decision against the single market,” Mr Schaeuble told Der Spiegel.
“In is in. Out is out. One has to respect the sovereignty of the British people.”
For some business leaders sympathetic to Brexit – and close to the Prime Minister – this is a problem. They agree that leaving the single market could result in significant economic headwinds. But, they tell me, there is a solution – the UK remaining in the single market but without the need for full free movement as presently constituted.
Kamal ends with this after having set the scene that Brexit will be an economic disaster for Europe…
The economic needs of businesses in the rest of the EU may force the hand of political leaders.
Why has the BBC’s economic editor only just realised the truth that has been obvious for a long time…as indeed we set out before in April…..
Would the EU lock the UK, the 5th largest economy in the world and an important trade partner with the EU, out of its markets? Hardly seems likely when it is committed to open markets and free trade……import tariffs very low or zero…..
The EU benefits from being one of the most open economies in the world and remains committed to free trade.
The average applied tariff for goods imported into the EU is very low. More than 70% of imports enter the EU at zero or reduced tariffs.
The EU’s services markets are highly open and we have arguably the most open investment regime in the world.
The EU has not reacted to the crisis by closing markets. However some the EU’s trading partners have not been so restrained as the EU has highlighted in the Trade and Investment Barriers Report and the report on protectionism.
In fact the EU has retained its capacity to conclude and implement trade agreements. The recent Free Trade Agreements with South Korea and with Singapore are examples of this and the EU has an ambitious agenda of trade agreements in the pipeline.
And here was our very own PM back in 2012 urging the EU to finalise a trade deal with Canada and all without free movement of people…
Cameron urges EU to strike free trade deal with Canada.
27 Jan 2012 Toronto Star, page A4
OTTAWA— British Prime Minister David Cameron is urging his fellow European leaders to move quickly to sign a free-trade deal with Canada.
He said opening up export markets for the European Union’s 27 member countries is a key part of an urgently needed effort to strengthen the continent’s economies.
“Let’s get EU free trade agreements with India, Canada and Singapore finalized by the end of the year,” he said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
If these trade liberalization deals were in place, it could generate an additional $118 billion in economic activity in EU countries, Cameron said.
And now? Cameron tells us such deals are impossible.
Funny how long it takes Kamal to come anywhere near close to reporting that the EU is desperate to do free trade deals with all and sundry as a matter of course. Remain must love him…Attaboy Kamal. Good lad. Keep up the good work and keep Leave down.
My my. Is it only three months ago that the BBC were pushing the line that there is a massive trade imbalance in Europe’s favour with the UK. Kamal Ahmed popped up then to point out in a sub heading entitled ‘Analysis’ (You’ve just got to love that pompous b*ll*cks from the Beeb, ‘Analysis’) that it had reached £23.2 Billion in the last quarter of 2015.
I think the total for 2015 was somewhere in the region of an £80 Billion deficit in Europe’s favour with the UK, and guess where the lion’s share of this trade inbalance is derived. Germany of course.
Mr. Ahmed went on to say “There is also an increasing division between the UK’s performance in the European Union, where the country’s goods trade deficit is widening, and Britain’s trade with the rest of the world, where the situation is rosier.” Please note that, even a beeb drone letting slip that it’s rosier out.
He then helfully points out that “Businesses finally seem to be looking beyond the EU’s borders for opportunities for growth.”
Why the volte-face from Mr. Ahmed now I wonder, as opposed to his ‘analysis’ three months ago.
And as for Herr Flick, sorry, Shaeuble, well he knows he’s talking a load of cobblers too, because he knows the consequences of any mini trade war brought on by a fit of pique where the German automotive industry will be the biggest losers of all, and if that happens then they will have to lay off all those astrophysicists and neurosurgeons they imported from Turkey.
So really nothing more than a load of b*ll*cks all round then. But then it is the BBC so what on earth do we expect.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35530340
“finally looking ” ? What an idiot. Britain has been trading with the rest of the world for centuries !
Just been on to the BBC website to look at the UK’s morning newspapers and I’ve just picked up on something. Under each front page the BBC inserts a black banner in which it gives its spin on what is being reported in the press. Never looked at it before, but something caught my eye.
Apparently, and this is according to the BBC, The Guardian and the Times ‘Report’ whereas the Daily Telegraph and the Mail ‘Claim’.
Really do we have to have this sh*t show’s blatant bias in everything they do. I’ll make my own mind up about what the press is saying without some blatant BBC spin.
Quick edit – just been back and the BBC have modified their banner for the Mail. The original was as I said.
Telegraph headline ” No 10 Panics as Leave Surges “.
Lubos Motl’s take on Schauble threatening to blackmail the Former UK:
http://motls.blogspot.fr/2016/06/germany-europe-should-adopt-pragmatic.html#more
The more Germans like this choose to reinforce the old stereotype of the bossy Kr***, the more likely it becomes that Brexit will succeed, IMO.
I hope we’re still stubborn and independently minded enough not to react well to this sort of talk.
FO Schauble, you mean faced old bastard.
Maria,
My late father always said that Germany should have been dismembered and parcelled out between surrounding countries and Russia, at the end of the war so that Germans would always be in a minority in each State. He advocated this when he was in the Control Commission, but he and others were overruled.
He believed that the Germans would never give up . Well Dad, how right you were !
I quite agree. Germany was only unified (after battering France, naturally) in 1871, it is an artificial country in many respects. Bavaria in particular has a strong sense of national identity. The fact they all speak German means nothing. Austria speaks German, but they are not part of Germany. Germany should have returned to pre-1871 states, only with Prussia broken up.
As it happened, it was the re-unification of Germany in 1989 which led to the Euro. This was a clever French scheme to keep Germany under control. Top marks to the pointy heads at the Quai d’Orsay, that wizard wheeze worked out very well didn’t it?
The fact is a unified Germany will always be the most powerful force on the Continent. France is like an irritating smaller sibling they have to humour. I want none of it, and for Britain to be an independent nation once again. That is all this referendum is about. Trade agreements are made all the time, and we will make one with the EU. This is about our national independence, nothing more, nothing less.
Rob,
I wish I had written your post . Totally on the button . There is nothing more to say except, why should we get dragged down into their shit ?
Thanks Grant, shame they didn’t listen to your dad!
Well said.
They should stick to making cars, which they’re obviously very good at, and music, although they seem to have lost the knack a little.
When they get one of their “big ideas”, people start to suffer. If France wants to hitch its wagon to that, good luck. We should have no part in it. Let’s look to Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc instead, if they’ll have us back.
Hey Grant, how are you?
I think our paths may have crossed. My late father was ostensibly in the Control Commission between 1947 and 1959. In reality it was a cover for his role in MI6. We lived in Bad Salzuflen from 48 to 53 when we moved to Berlin just in time for the Russian tanks rampaging through East Berlin to forcibly put down the uprising against communism (I was six at the time). We lived halfway between Spandau and Gatow and then in Charlottenburg on the edge of the Grunewald.
TPO,
Well, it is quite possible. My Dad did not talk about it much.