With some haste the EU has signed a comprehensive trade deal with Japan, being particularly concerned that it should be concluded before Brexit in March 2019. Japan will not be required to join either a customs union or the single market. This looks like a deliberate snub to and attack on Britain and Brexit.
The EU Japan trade deal will eliminate nearly all tariffs between the two parties and affect over 90% of the Euro 86bn per annum of trade. Car safety and environmental standards will be aligned and international labelling standards on textiles and medical products.
As in all normal free trade agreements Arbitration of disputes will be by the World Trade Organisation (and not the “Moldova-type” subservience to the European Court which May’s Chequers proposal contains – contradicting her previous red lines)
99 percent of Japan’s exports to the EU will eventually be eliminated, while duties on 94 percent of EU’s exported items to Japan will be abolished. Japan will eliminate its 15% duties on wine from the EU and cut those on cheese, beef and pork.
But the critical part for Britain could be the elimination of the 10% tax on Japan’s auto exports to the EU (albeit in 7 years!) This could be a blow to Japanese car manufacture in the UK since it was precisely to avoid such 10% tariffs that made British based car plants so important to the Japanese.
Of course there are other equally important factors advantageous to Britain – like the quality of workers, the Pound exchange rate and the importance of high quality local British suppliers. But given the general badmouthing of Britain and British trade by EU businesses it looks like this quickly agreed trade pact was also aimed at us.
However this deal does show how if the EU is minded to be reasonable on trade they can easily conclude a free trade pact with significant players – and as the 5th or 6th biggest economy in the world the UK is certainly economically significant.
The trouble is we – who value our nation, its constitution, our parliament and the democratic sovereignty of the British (and other) people – are not quite on the same wavelength as corporate protectionist Europe – seeking geopolitical expansion and political domination.
MAY’S MANY BETRAYALS
The utter contempt that Prime Minister May showed towards her Cabinet, the Brexit Department headed by David Davis, the British people who voted in a referendum, the British Constitution and Parliament (by showing her Chequers plan to the German Chancellor before her Cabinet) was the presentation of a White Paper for (a non-) Brexit.
It has of course failed miserably as Michel Barnier the EU Negotiator has just rejected it so May does not even have the smallest plus to put against her universal enemies. Ian Duncan Smith a former Leader of the Conservative Party summed up the disgraceful events of the last two weeks:
…..within a matter of hours, it became clear that apart from the Prime Minister and a couple of chosen Cabinet Ministers, the rest of the Cabinet hadn’t even seen it (the White Paper). Notwithstanding that, the Cabinet were to retire to Chequers within days and there they were to be asked to agree to it.
I mention that this was unexpected because we were all working under the assumption that the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, was completing a White Paper – yet, as we discovered, astonishingly, he was not one of those who had been shown this ‘new’ Downing Street White Paper in advance.
………Cabinet ministers were given an ultimatum to take it or leave it. For some reason, they could not amend it in any serious way. We later discovered that this was because Chancellor Merkel in Germany and some in the European Commission had been briefed on its contents before the Cabinet (and even before the Brexit Secretary as well).
What made this even worse was that, for whatever reason, in advance of the Chequers meeting, the media received some savage attacks on senior Cabinet ministers which they were clear came from Downing Street, or as one astonished journalist said to me, “the guns of Downing Street have been turned on those in the Conservative Party who voted to leave the EU”.
(From article on Brexit Central)
Has there ever been a more treacherous occupant of Nr 10 Downing Street? In May 2017, ICM found that 47% of people trusted May on Brexit. That is now – after the Chequers scandal – 26%. Not that Corbyn has benefited since on Brexit he is backed by only 18%. BMG Research revealed 36% of Conservative voters were less likely to support the party if it fails to take back control of trade from the EU – in other words a clean clear Brexit.
But the incompetence and betrayals of Theresa May know no bounds. Having agreed a huge financial payment to leave the EU she now decides to postpone leaving for another two years. Without British EU commissioners and without any British MEPs we will be controlled by Brussels until 2020 with no influence over EU laws. To achieve this surrender May will try to amend her own Withdrawal Bill before it even comes into force!!
Unless May is removed in October the Tory party will be in meltdown – with a massive rise in support for UKIP – or perhaps the rise of a far more radical party spurred not just by the Brexit negotiation farce but by the daily betrayals of critical social, moral and economic principles by this dangerously stupid woman. Even the former European Commissioner Lord Mandelson described the Chequers plan as a “national humiliation” because it would mean
“the EU would ultimately call the shots, not just now but indefinitely”.
Perhaps the previously europhile Mandelson, suddenly aware of why Jews are fleeing Europe, has changed his mind!
THE UK CAR INDUSTRY
As previously pointed out on this site it was the euro-fanatic Helmut Kohl (who in his youth was prosecuted for tearing down border posts between France and Germany!) who said that the UK would never leave the EU because “business would not allow it”. With recent threats from GERMAN companies based in Britain – Airbus (Franco German) Siemens, BMW – we can see how the German thinks: the British will ultimately surrender their country rather than suffer economically.
The euro-fanatics never thought we could leave, then that we would leave, then that we did leave… now they think we will leave in name only. If we believe Airbus, BMW, Siemens etc then we must “save jobs” by capitulation to our new masters – which is what the Nazi appeasing CBI wanted in the 1930s!
But since these corporations trade with, export to, export from, construct in and obey the rules of eg the USA – without the USA being in the EU – how credible is their threat to abandon billions of pounds of investment in non EU Britain?
But what good has the EU and its car factories (which import 60% of the car, assemble it in the UK and then export 100% of the profit) ever done for us? Former Minister John Redwood MP writes about the UK based (no longer UK owned) car industry:
One of the most deceitful arguments some Remain advocates use is that the car industry depends on the EU for its success and would be adversely affected if we leave. They need to explain the damage membership of the EEC/EU did to it.
In 1972, our last year as a free and independent country, the UK made 1.92 million cars. After just ten years in the EEC/EU that had crashed to just 888,000. Our membership was devastating to us, removing more than 50 % in a decade.
We have never made as many cars in any year during the whole 45 years of membership as we did the year before we joined. Why did this happen?
Before we joined UK people mainly bought UK built cars. On joining we had to remove all tariffs and some other barriers on goods like cars where the Germans and French were more competitive. They did not remove barriers on services where we were more competitive. When the tariffs came off more UK people chose continental cars and our industry faced savage cuts in jobs and output.
How a Conservative Government can do without the services of an MP with John Redwood’s business, economic and political stature shows just how disastrous this administration is. The site of the young inexperienced Dominic Raab negotiating with Michel Barnier, the experienced elder statesman, is embarrassing.
Of course the EU did not apply zero tariffs to other countries’ cars – which is precisely what Donald Trump is complaining about today! And within the protected EU any foreign car makers gradually shifted production to cheaper parts of the EU. Jaguar has just said it will have the Discovery made in Slovakia! So even the pretence that a “once British” car made in Britain is “British” will no longer apply.
And it is not just in the car industry that there has been a systematic euro-corporatist takeover of great British companies – all from behind protectionist financial walls and covert subsidies in their own countries. While politicians slept our industry and commerce have been hollowed out – by our “partners”, aided by the corporatist managers of our wealth in the City of London!
