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Sure, you get more freedom to negotiate your own terms, at the cost of being a significantly smaller player. So you lose some leverage and gain some elsewhere.
by ska 6y ago
Sure, you get more freedom to negotiate your own terms, at the cost of being a significantly smaller player. So you lose some leverage and gain some elsewhere.
It's really to early to tell how this will shake out, but it's obviously as silly to assume either that in general UK will be able negotiate better deals on its own than as part of the EU, or that it won't be able to negotiate any good deals.
- breakfastduck 6y agoAnd that's the real stuff. You gain some you lose some, on both sides. We have no idea really how it will play out, depends hugely on how the UK govt acts in the next few years.
- ska 6y agoOne thing I think that is telling is that I heard the UK government has characterized this as a "Canada like" agreement (e.g. NAFTA). I think there is some deeper truth in this. UK is setting itself up to be in a very similar role, i.e. Canada::USA -> UK::EU. When you are the junior partner in a tightly coupled trade partnership, you have a lot of nominal freedom in practice you are going to steered by the larger player, both intentionally and not. Who was it that said, "When America sneezes, Canada gets a cold"? I think that was originally a european saying, so we've come full circle. I'm not sure people in the UK have really come to terms with this, yet. There is no plausible return path to, say, pre-war UK on the world stage. There might be room for another Canada though.
- djmobley 6y agoWhen people refer to a “Canada” style trade deal in the context of Brexit, they are referring to the free trade deal between Canada and the EU. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Trade_Agreement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_T...
- ska 6y agoAh, thanks obviously I missed that context. I think my general point stands.