231–240 of 399 posts
Are there any downsides to this that were perhaps left out of the article?
The downside of free trade agreements is well studied: while overall it's a net positive for the economies involved, there are some individual losers.
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For those interested in why - Japan always had very high tariffs on cheese (40% on WTO, 37.5% on EU). In comparison, the US has a general tariff of 10% on cheese, with many exceptions making it 0%. http://www.customs.go.jp/english/tariff/2019_2/data/e_04.htm https://hts.usitc.gov/?query=cheese Similarly high tariffs across the board on most imports has been the norm in Japan for decades, with many agricultural produc…
> Free trade is great when applied evenly. Free trade is great even when applied unevenly.
As Friedman used to point out, if Japan wants to subsidize its steel at the cost of their own taxpayers, just take the cheap steel and be thankful for it.
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No not at all. They negotiate like two normal entities. But I think it is funny to have a nuclear power being scared about a line in a contract it signs. It can just declare: I ignore that line and then wait what the other side will do. The worst case is that the EU is also breaking the contract - maybe completely - which is then ... the same as no-deal.
So, you're suggesting that if the EU responded with trade sanctions that we'd ... what, threaten them with nukes? You don't think there might be a point in the future where we want to trade with any of the other 26 countries of the EU ever again? You want to declare war on them to support our project of making UK an economic backwater ... I thought I'd heard it all ... wow. What's your position on importing food? Giv…
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Just a perspective - €10k with a margin of 5% (is what I see after all the expenses for such a small volume) leaves you with €500 to comply with regulations. VAT compliance with the just UK costs us 700 GBP per year so far and few hours each quarter.
Cost/bureaucracy of doing business is a common annoyance unfortunately, not exclusive to one or other country and those should be passed onto the consumer. These are rarely trivial on a small scale, small margin business.
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What's your proposed alternative to this sort of international tribunal? To me it feels like obviously the correct solution, and e.g. the EU/EEA has this with the EFTA courts and the WTO has it with its courts. Point in favor: 1. It makes sense for a corporation in say Malaysia to be able to sue Australia over state subsidies, otherwise they need to convince their own governments to bring it up at the inter-state lev…
The presence of a central court that can regulate goverment that act rashly is one thing, to allow individual companies to sue governments is another.
You're also assuming that all trade disputes are going to involve country X having an issue with country Y, whereas e.g. in the EU/EEA companies sometimes sue their own government for being in breach of the trade rules, and prevail in front of the EFTA court.
E.g. a meat importing company in Iceland sued the Icelandic state over the Icelandic government's ban on the import of fresh meat from the EU/EEA[1]. They prevailed, and now Iceland's having to allow that, over the objections of its powerful farming lobby.
It wouldn't have made sense for any foreign EU/EEA government to start a trade dispute with Iceland over this matter, but it got resolved because a local company was able to sue and have the EFTA court rule on the matter.
Why shouldn't the aggrieved party be able to sue?
1. http://www.eftasurv.int/media/press-releases/Fact-sheet-Icel...
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The point of that was to stop Malaysia and Singapore from pirating movies and software. I think there's something to be said about the correct distrust of MPAA. But at the same time, Malaysia and Singapore were clear pirate hubs that were harmful to any IP based economy.
> ... Singapore were clear pirate hubs that were harmful to any IP based economy. That's an absurd and factually incorrect statement.
Joke alert - it used to be a piracy hub.
Lowering tarifs in general are good but my bet is that this is not really going to mean that much. This is only good for big corporations. For the rest it's bureaucrazy (pun intended) and frankly won't have that big of an impact no matter how big it is. Neither the EU nor the Japan are able to drive the market in any significant way. So it's great for Siemens but won't really matter to the little startup.
Other than that, your cynicism is bland and boring. Why would consumers not reap at least some benefits from tariffs for cheese falling Faron 40% to zero. It’s not like there’s a big moat around the idea of shipping cheese from France to japan and selling it that would allow some monopolist to capture that difference.
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> Free trade is great when applied evenly. Free trade is great even when applied unevenly.
Surprised this was being downvoted because it is true. If countries engage in protectionism unilaterally, they are predominantly harming their own consumers and undermining competition of their own businesses. As Friedman used to point out, if Japan wants to subsidize its steel at the cost of their own taxpayers, just take the cheap steel and be thankful for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those interested in why - Japan always had very high tariffs on cheese (40% on WTO, 37.5% on EU). In comparison, the US has a general tariff of 10% on cheese, with many exceptions making it 0%. http://www.customs.go.jp/english/tariff/2019_2/data/e_04.htm https://hts.usitc.gov/?query=cheese Similarly high tariffs across the board on most imports has been the norm in Japan for decades, with many agricultural produc…
> Free trade is great when applied evenly. Free trade is great even when applied unevenly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm really not sure what your point is. Clarification?
It's clear to me - why is such a powerful country acting like such a cowardly custard?