Geopolitical impact of Brexit

[RandBlade]

Really? Which major economies does the EU have a trade deal in place with?

As far as I can tell the only G20 nations that the EU has a trade deal with are Mexico, South Korea, South Africa and Turkey.

Mexico and South Korea have confirmed they want to get a trade deal with the UK, so when we get that we won't be losing those. Leaving just South Africa and Turkey yet to confirm they want a trade deal with us.

However a swathe of other G20 nations have confirmed they do want a trade deal with the UK. Including China, India, Singapore and Australia.

Before Article 50 is invoked dead duck Obama will be replaced and once he's gone we'll be negotiating with the USA too.

[Loki]

Erm, I don't think you realize the extent of anti-free trade hysteria in the US right now.

[RandBlade]

I do but even Trump, a ringleader of said hysteria, is backing a deal with Brits as opposed to a deal with Mexicans etc

A mixture of being similar economics, similar culture and old fashioned racism. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's what it is.

The only American leader I've heard speak against a trade deal with Britain is back of the queue Obama. Considering he is a lame duck and he said that with the blessing of [and stood next to] our then Prime Minister and he was then personally insulted by Leave campaigners and his advice was then rejected by my compatriots ... I'll take his prognostications with a full salt grinder.

[Hazir]

So let me get this straight ; you live in a universe where the president of the USA needs the blessing of the British PM to say whatever the fuck he wants to say about anything?

Appearantly in this universe there is no NAFTA also.

Totally delusional.

[RandBlade]

I live in the universe where what the American President says about a British vote, while in Britain, while stood next to the British PM may be related to what the British PM wants him to say.

Had America been having a rare federal plebiscite with Obama backing one side, and the British PM had gone over to the White House and came out of the Oval Office after a meeting with the President and gave a joint press conference with the President, backing one side of the American vote ... then yes I'd think it quite probably that had been discussed with the President before.

I live in a universe where one of the Presidential contenders (the one I named) is against NAFTA as it exists currently.

[Hazir]

The American President still doesn't need the blessing of the British PM to say whatever he wants about with whom his country will or will not negiotiate and when. Which was made blatantly clear when he repeated it to the new PM.

In reality the Swiss are desperately attempting to square their circle; their control over EU immigration should exist of the right to decide together with the EU an emergency brake may be applied. Hear anything you like? Brexit is Brexit and
I am starting to like what it means.

[RandBlade]

The American President still doesn't need the blessing of the British PM to say whatever he wants about with whom his country will or will not negiotiate and when. Which was made blatantly clear when he repeated it to the new PM.

While neither of his potential successors are saying anything like that and there is zero chance he will be President when Article 50 is invoked so what he has to say is less relevant than what Bill Clinton has to say.

In reality the Swiss are desperately attempting to square their circle; their control over EU immigration should exist of the right to decide together with the EU an emergency brake may be applied.

Good for them. We're not Switzerland, we are much bigger than them, but they have better trade deals than we do in the EU and a better GDP per capita outside the EU than we have had restrained by the EU. If we can do as well as Switzerland, if not better, I'll be happy.

Hear anything you like? Brexit is Brexit and
I am starting to like what it means.

That makes two of us.

[Hazir]

Erm, I don't think you realize the extent of anti-free trade hysteria in the US right now.

What he said.

[Loki]

I do but even Trump, a ringleader of said hysteria, is backing a deal with Brits as opposed to a deal with Mexicans etc

A mixture of being similar economics, similar culture and old fashioned racism. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's what it is.

The only American leader I've heard speak against a trade deal with Britain is back of the queue Obama. Considering he is a lame duck and he said that with the blessing of [and stood next to] our then Prime Minister and he was then personally insulted by Leave campaigners and his advice was then rejected by my compatriots ... I'll take his prognostications with a full salt grinder.

Trump has 3 positions on every issue he's ever talked about. He's anti-trade. Period. That's been his shtick for years before he even ran for office. And Clinton has been forced into a corner on trade by the anti-trade wing of the party (which is a majority of the party). There's absolutely no appetite for trade deals with anyone, friend or foe. No one's going to destroy their political capital just to throw the UK a bone.

[RandBlade]

Trump has 3 positions on every issue he's ever talked about. He's anti-trade. Period. That's been his shtick for years before he even ran for office. And Clinton has been forced into a corner on trade by the anti-trade wing of the party (which is a majority of the party). There's absolutely no appetite for trade deals with anyone, friend or foe. No one's going to destroy their political capital just to throw the UK a bone.

I don't see anyone gaining political capital by arguing against eg trade with Canada. It is trade with Mexico, with vastly different economy types, undercutting wages and so on that is most controversial. Try selling a trade deal with Poles and Romanians and you're going to have the exact same controversy.

But lets look at it from the viewpoint of Game Theory. W.r.t. the USA are we more likely, less likely or the same chance to get a trade deal in the EU or post-Brexit.

If you're right and there's no chance of any trade deals at all, then TTIP is dead and in the EU we don't get a deal. Out of the EU we also don't get a deal. No change.

If I'm right (and even Hazir agreed with me) that the UK will get a deal then in the EU we fail to get a deal but out of it we manage to get one. Brexit is better w.r.t. the USA.

[Loki]

Have you not heard the opposition to trade with the EU?

[RandBlade]

With the EU yes absolutely I have. As I said that would be logically consistent as there's no reason to oppose trade with Mexico but to support it with Poland and Romania. Besides even the French don't exactly have a special relationship with the USA.

I have heard no such opposition to a deal with the UK from the usual suspects of anti-trade critics in the USA. The UK isn't Poland or Romania or even France. The UK is far more comparable to Canada than Mexico.

Even Obama isn't against a trade deal with the UK per se, he just wants TPP/TTIP to be ratified this year and be part of his legacy but that with TTIP at least simply isn't going to happen. And if it isn't going to happen, we can move on to what may happen.

[RandBlade]

I will make a confident prediction that a trade deal between the USA and the UK will have been agreed before the next Presidential election in 2020. I would say before the next British General which is scheduled for May 2020, but if we have an early election that could be a hostage to fortune.

The outlines of a deal are already there in the already-agreed TPP. Even if TPP dies due to fears of trading with the likes of Malaysia and Vietnam, it can be readily resurrected as a template for the likes of the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand - of which only the UK is not a signatory nation.

If TPP is approved by Congress in its lame duck session, there is even less reason to think the UK wouldn't then get the same terms of trade agreed.

[Hazir]

You must be smoking something seriously strong these days.

[RandBlade]

I'm enjoying a rather potent strain of "I told you so" as all my best hopes are coming true and all the fears are about as concerning as frost in the Sahara.

After such a difficult decision its hards not to be smug at belatedly being right with my late switch of sides.

[Hazir]

Which switch of sides? And am I right to understand you were hoping for a serious haircut of your financial industries?

[RandBlade]

Switching from Remain to Leave. I supported Remain until just before the vote, I switched to Leave quite late (which is why I posted that here).

There hasn't been a serious haircut of our financial industries ...

[Aimless]

Fat chance, considering the EU is constitutionally incapable of making an agreement.

Considering the fact that the EU has trade agreements with various countries and blocs I must assume you're working with some very specific and peculiar definitions for 20% of the words you used in that sentence.

Fat chance, considering the EU is constitutionally incapableish of making an agreement with major G20 economies other than Mexico, South Korea, South Africa, Turkey, the three G20 countries in the EU and the one that still hasn't left the EU

Well I'm glad we cleared that up at least. If your football team were as good at moving the goalposts as you are perhaps they wouldn't lose so often.

Mexico and South Korea have confirmed they want to get a trade deal with the UK, so when we get that we won't be losing those. Leaving just South Africa and Turkey yet to confirm they want a trade deal with us.

However a swathe of other G20 nations have confirmed they do want a trade deal with the UK. Including China, India, Singapore and Australia.

This disregards the specific details of the deals. For example, the deal you get with South Korea outside the EU may be worse (for you) than the deal the EU has with South Korea.

Everyone wants deals with everyone and yet free trade doesn't rule all relations between countries and deals seem to be difficult to negotiate from initial overtures to final ratification and implementation, esp. for the strongest economies. This may reflect the fact that, while free trade agreements are great for everyone in theory, in practice countries often find themselves faced with the likely possibility of being on the losing side of a deal.

[Hazir]

Switching from Remain to Leave. I supported Remain until just before the vote, I switched to Leave quite late (which is why I posted that here).

There hasn't been a serious haircut of our financial industries ...

Of course your claim of having switched from Remain to Leave is just making me chuckle, even as a faux-Remainer you had this crazy idea you were just part of a free trade zone, which isn't the case. As all thinking people knew and as everybody can see right now. Political goals trump economical ones by a mile.

Then your daily mailesque 'carry on' comment, no, nothing has happened yet. And that is because half of your ministers make statements on Brexit which then are slammed down by your prime minister as 'not-government policy' sooner than anyone could ask 'so this is what Brexit means?' No wonder people who make financial decisions still have some lingering hope that in the end your PM will find a cunning plan to make Brexit go away or just turn it into EU-membership by another name.

If she doesn't do either of the two, by the end of this process the happy news you are feeding yourself on from the DM will be a memory from the past.

[RandBlade]

I have never read the Daily Mail. It's nearly as bad as the Guardian.

I never had the crazy idea we were part of "just" a free trade zone. I said I wanted us to be a part of a free trade zone. I never once claimed to want more than that. Until the end I thought that the extra bullshit the EU carried with it was a price worth paying for being in the free trade zone. Once I was convinced we could do a better economic job signing our own free trade deals outside, that price was no longer worth paying.

If the EU could have been sensible and come up with a free trade zone sans bullshit as part of Cameron's mooted renegotiation, we could have stayed in the EU. It didn't, so we won't.

[Hazir]

I have never read the Daily Mail. It's nearly as bad as the Guardian.

I never had the crazy idea we were part of "just" a free trade zone. I said I wanted us to be a part of a free trade zone. I never once claimed to want more than that. Until the end I thought that the extra bullshit the EU carried with it was a price worth paying for being in the free trade zone. Once I was convinced we could do a better economic job signing our own free trade deals outside, that price was no longer worth paying.

If the EU could have been sensible and come up with a free trade zone sans bullshit as part of Cameron's mooted renegotiation, we could have stayed in the EU. It didn't, so we won't.

So, you originally wanted to stay in something you weren't in to start with. How's that different from wanting out of what you actually were in. FYI, there already is a free trade zone in the EU, there was no reason to negotiate one.

[Hazir]

seems like the Brit gov really hasn't got a clue; it's going to try to play this with the cards close to their chests. As if everybody won't know literally everything in detail if only for the fact that the deal(s) are so multi-party, that even God Almighty couldn't keep the leaks from happening. And that is presuming that anybody has any interest in keeping anything the Brits put in the vicinity of the table secret.

[RandBlade]

You've clearly never negotiated anything in your life ...

[Hazir]

Well, I have indeed never negotiated a deal with 30 parties that I all need to keep totally happy, who are all talking to each other because they have a vested interest in cooperating with each other, but not so much in cooperating with you.
I can however imagine how that kinda sorta works; and playing with your cards close to your chest doesn't get into the picture. Especially not if it means holding them so close to your chest that you don't have an idea what cards you are actually holding.

It's gonna be so much fun to see you try to wriggle out of Brexit. Because you never imagined we'd define its meaning.

[RandBlade]

Well I have done negotiations and the point of not openly discussing negotiations is not to keep your current proposals secret, it is to keep your bottom line secret.

If you fail to do that then you know you will get no better than your bottom line, if you're lucky. If you keep people guessing you can do better.

Incidentally "playing your cards close to your chest" is an interesting analogy as I'm part of a Poker League and there you could have 10 people at the same table and while bets etc are placed in public you do so precisely while never revealing your cards and trying to give away as little as possible.

I know you want to try and screw us over which is why we're best off no longer in a union with people like you, but our government isn't as gullible as you'd like.

[Timbuk2]

There hasn't been a serious haircut of our financial industries ...

UK Banks are waiting to see what form the negotiations take, what the outcome is, whether passporting is part of the package etc

Things are far from certain now and will remain uncertain for quite a while.

This much has been broadcast internally at my bank.

[Hazir]

Passporting is a goner if the British government doesn't manage to beg a Norway style deal out of this. Basically the same is true for every other benefit of membership.
The negotiators on the EU side can work from the premise the UK is a third country that needs a deal whereas the EU would like a deal. And very much of whether the EU will still like a deal will depend on how well behaved the UK is in the divorce settlement.

And in Randblade's poker world that means we deal and get to have a look at the cards before we decide you deserve any given card.

[RandBlade]

UK Banks are waiting to see what form the negotiations take, what the outcome is, whether passporting is part of the package etc

Things are far from certain now and will remain uncertain for quite a while.

This much has been broadcast internally at my bank.

Absolutely things are uncertain I completely agree. Hazir's talk of haircuts is as if those have already happened.

While I hope we keep passporting it isn't the end of the world if we lose it, London is the world's foremost financial centre not because of passporting. Most of our exports already go outside of the EU. If we lose passporting, and I hope we don't, then new procedures will swiftly be developed to get around that.

Passporting is a goner if the British government doesn't manage to beg a Norway style deal out of this. Basically the same is true for every other benefit of membership.
The negotiators on the EU side can work from the premise the UK is a third country that needs a deal whereas the EU would like a deal. And very much of whether the EU will still like a deal will depend on how well behaved the UK is in the divorce settlement.

We don't need a deal any more than you do. I'd like a deal, it won't be the end of the world if we don't get one though. The UK is in a much stronger position than impoverished and slow-growing continental Europe is. If you want to close yourselves off to your largest export market that's fine, we'll just export more to the fast growing rest of the world that already take most of our exports ... you're not the prize you assume you are.

[Hazir]

Gosh, no remark on how the German car makers are going to save you from bein out on your asses today. With no deal at all you lot are so fucked even Turkey would feel like a better place to put your money.

[RandBlade]

I stand by what I've said all along, it would be colossally stupid not to agree a reasonable deal. The UK is up for making a deal, European exporters want a deal too.

Of course if EU leaders weren't pig-headed and stupid then the EU wouldn't be such a disastrous mess, so it is entirely possible that there will be no deal. If so it will hurt you more since we are already richer than you are and have more opportunities than you have to grow. Let's hope as I expect that your leaders can get their heads out of their arse long enough to make a deal that will be mutually beneficial.