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EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

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Re: EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

#291

Post by celticninja »

Silhouette wrote: post #175
celticninja wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU membership predates the GFA too. The GFA was able to be out in place in part thanks to the existence of both the CTA and the EU. Do you think that if it worked the way you thought it did, there would be such a furore over the situation? I'm not saying UK MPs are the smartest bunch of people but if Brexit would leave the GFA untouched then surely they would have worked that out by now. Perhaps you are wrong.

My honest opinion is that the NI/Ireland border is an important issue, and the GFA is an important agreement, but they are not the only important issue and the only important agreement. I think Brexit is a divisive issue, and as a matter of political convenience a certain part of the political world and the public have latched onto the Irish border issue to the exclusion of almost all other considerations, with the e…

It's a shit show that's sure.

Re: EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

#292

Post by defertoreptar »

Barrin92 wrote: post #232
zeroname wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I know what Friedman thinks of tariffs in general, but I like to think that he'd be at least somewhat understanding of the scenario we are currently in, where the endgame is to have lower tariffs on both sides.

Re: EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

#293

Post by notahacker »

repolfx wrote: post #280
notahacker wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the EU position that full and equal access to the services market is dependent on also allowing free movement of people, and the fairly standard EU position that foreign companies' access to its services market must depend on them following standards harmonised with EU law. The former is a sticking point for the UK achieving the same level of services access before, the latter an impediment to a UK government…

There isn't really much services market in the EU, the "common market" only ever really worked properly for goods. This is one reason the UK doesn't like it much - it's got a more services oriented economy than the other countries, but the EU doesn't care much to open up e.g. German service industries to British competition. Meanwhile the EU only requires free movement of people for trade deals for geographically Eur…

The UK has substantial access to the European markets it's particularly strong in though, like marine insurance and financial services (including a large amount of Euro-denominated services business), European markets which we have voluntarily traded London dominance of for inability to participate in without relying on European business units. The fact that despite a general presumption in favour of a right to to bid on them, UK companies are not well placed to actually win contracts to (e.g) provide advice on German law in German is largely irrelevant to that and not in any sense an economic rationale for Brexit. We're not going to get more comprehensive services agreements with more promising trade partners as a result.

Obviously Canada and Japan have no freedom of movement requirements in their trade deals, but they also haven't asked for any access to many of the markets the UK has up until now benefited from. And as you say, the EU has some inclination to non-recognition of British services as a simple penalty, but it also has perfectly good reasons to keep Britain out of many of them in the interests of giving advantages to Member States where the business can be moved out of London without significant disruption, and because the UK's negotiating position starts from the ludicrous position that any standards harmonised with the EU should be possible for the UK to unilaterally rescind at short notice because sovereignty innit.

The UK has not been told that to "accept unlimited immigration...if it wants a trade deal of any sort whatsoever" - quite the opposite - and it is sad that in an otherwise pretty nuanced post you have resorted to such blatant misrepresentations.

(It's pretty emblematic of Brexit that the post hoc rationale for leaving the EU has become so focused on how relatively unattractive the options offered afterwards are...)

Re: EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

#294

Post by hexane360 »

FabHK wrote: post #248
zeroname wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free trade is great when applied evenly. Free trade is great even when applied unevenly.

Here's one thing I find funny though about this argument (Econ 101, yet correct, yet complicated): The argument for free trade is an efficiency argument (comparative advantage, Ricardo, Hecksher-Ohlin yada yada) that it's unambiguously better, but it's predicated on redistribution: The reason that free trade is unambiguously better is that you can compensate all the "losers" of free trade so that they're as well off…

This is because the strongest advocates of free trade don't treat economics as a useful model, they treat it as doctrine.

Re: EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

#295

Post by nroets »

FabHK wrote: post #248
zeroname wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free trade is great when applied evenly. Free trade is great even when applied unevenly.

Here's one thing I find funny though about this argument (Econ 101, yet correct, yet complicated): The argument for free trade is an efficiency argument (comparative advantage, Ricardo, Hecksher-Ohlin yada yada) that it's unambiguously better, but it's predicated on redistribution: The reason that free trade is unambiguously better is that you can compensate all the "losers" of free trade so that they're as well off…

Taxing and social services aren't the only way that redistribution occurs. When people are rich enough, they become lazy tourists. Then they travel to poor countries and spend money in restaurants, hotels etc.

Similarly, hard working immigrants travel from poor countries to rich countries to do menial work that rich people can't be bothered with. They often send some money back home.

If the US can sell their excess maize in poor countries, it lowers the cost of food for the poor people in those countries. (Especially true when the local harvest is poor)

Re: EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

#296

Post by fauigerzigerk »

speleding wrote: post #265
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. But there is some progress on that as well. From Jan 2019, the so called VAT MOSS (mini one stop shop) is open to companies from outside the EU as well: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-changes-to-th... I don't know how it works exactly, but it means that you can now supply digital goods and services to all EU countries after getting registered with the VAT MOSS instead of registering for V…

IIRC being below the 10.000 limit means you are allowed to charge the VAT from the EU country you are based, also for sales outside your country, I don't think it allows you to charge no VAT at all (that would probably be too easy to abuse)

Yes, but for small businesses that often means no VAT at all. For instance, the VAT registration threshold here in the UK is £85,000. Yet, until last month, you would have had to register for VAT even if you sold just pennies worth of (digital) goods into other EU countries.

I'm not quite sure how it affects US companies. There is no sales tax on exports from the US. So I think even if a US company would normally charge state level sales taxes on local sales, they would no longer have to charge VAT on any sales into the EU below 10,000. But I could easily be wrong on that.

I'm not an accountant.

Re: EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

#297

Post by kaybe »

drak0n1c wrote: post #241
Foobar8568 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever tried to grill raclette, vacherinn, gruyère, camembert, reblochon etc? For a couple of raw milk cheeses that are either dedicated to eat grilled/melt or "cold". Anything like Kraft singles is a joke

There's a reason why people say "the best thing since sliced bread". Sliced cheese has similar structural advantages. What is convenient becomes popular - for better or worse.

You can buy some of those cheeses sliced or grated in the supermarket here. It's not a structural problem.

Re: EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

#298

Post by nroets »

Mirioron wrote: post #289
Barrin92 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

VAT in the EU behaves in a similar manner as a tariff would. Yet we seem to be doing rather okay in that sense.

The VAT income of the state is the same regardless of where the product was manufactured. So it's not like a tariff at all.

Re: EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

#300

Post by kaybe »

max76 wrote: post #136

"For the first time, the trade agreement includes countries' Paris climate deal commitments." This is a brilliant answer to the tragedy of the commons. Often times people ask why they should make great efforts to be more environmentally friendly when other groups are not. This creates multiparty incentives attached to real economic benefits to keep their word on climate change. I hope The US, China, and Russia all en…

Here is some good news I found today:

The Montreal protocol (to ban ozone-layer-destroying gas emissions) works quite well so far and also has implications for climate change:

> As reported in the 2014 Assessment, chemistry–climate models suggest that continued accumulation of ODSs in the atmosphere in the absence of the Montreal Protocol would have led to a collapse of the global ozone layer by the mid-21st century, with devastating environ-mental implications (Newman et al., 2009; Garcia et al., 2012).

> The last Assessment also reported on the additional (mostly unanticipated) benefits of ODS regulations for mitigation of global climate change.

> Specifically, it was reported that by later this century, unregulated ODS increases could have led to global surface temperature increases comparable to tem-perature increases caused by other greenhouse gases (Velders et al., 2007) and could have almost doubled changes in the hydrological cycle (precipitation minus evaporation) over the next few decades.

The newest addition, the Kigali Amendment, phases out some more gases. This also has implications:

> As discussed in Chapter 2, these new studies indicate that the an-ticipated phasedown of HFCs is expected to avoid up to 0.4 K of global mean surface warming by 2100.

(see some plots on page 34)

http://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/Assessment_Panel/S...

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