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Britain must embrace EU says CBI
1TrueNorth
Posts: 4,001 Forum Member
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In spite of looming cast iron gaurantees of refferendums from the buisness minded Conservative party The Confederation Of British Industry says that Britain must remain at the heart of the EU banging the drum for British industry and that British buisness leaders are pragmatic and embrace the emerging Europe. They also favour the upcoming EU-US Free trade agreement. http://telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9772519/Britain-must-embrace-EU-to-bang-drum-for-business-says-CBI.html
That the tories have not got one of the most powerful lobby groups in the country on side esspecially one that promotes the interest of big buisness is interesting to say the least.
That the tories have not got one of the most powerful lobby groups in the country on side esspecially one that promotes the interest of big buisness is interesting to say the least.
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Who would we trade with if we left the EU?
same people as now I suppose - why not?
I wasn't sure if we would still be able to trade with EU countries if we left the EU.
No wed have to trade with the EU as a block. And that block being the biggest market on earth would absaloutley dominate the negotiations as our tiny (by comparison to the EU) market simply wouldn't have much to bargain with. We'd also have to abide by their regulations without having any say in the proceedings.
How powerful are EU regulators ? ask the once most powerful CEO on the planet Jack Welch. The EU Regulators launched antitrust investigation and sent regulators to the USA to stop one American company buying out another American company and were 100% successful and left his life in ruins. The reason being that the companies involved General Electric and (name escape me) wanted to trade with us... us as in the EU. We.... The EU were concerned that the deal would squash all competition (aircraft engines if memory serves) and they basicly said tthat this new mega corperation would not be allowed to trade with the EU. SO the deal was off.
Welch had sweetned the US government by agreeing to sell off bits and pieces of GE's other buisness's.
Then president george bush (jr) even flew to Brussels and made some speech about how EU regulators had no buisness interfering in a US deal betwetwo American corperations.
He was completely ignored and the deal was off and welchs life fell apart.
Quite frankly, We won.
From outside the EU imagine two US companies merging to create a mega corperation that would kill a few british firms we'd be powerless.
there is absolutely no doubt that the EU would not only want but need a free trade agreement with the UK. Very soon the UK will be the second biggest EU economy behind Germany and we have an absolutely massive trade deficit with the majority of EU countries. Given the fact most EU countries have higher unemployment then the UK, growth is much slower then the UK and the economies have been flat and decreasing for almost five years they will not get rid of trade with the UK
None of the non-EU world can trade with the EU?
Nothing would change. Of course, a lot of Eurocrats would lose their six-figure salaries. Hence, the mininformation put out that leads to doubts like yours.
The EU. Why should that change, as long as we manufacture our stuff in accordance with EU regs. This is what everyone does. I suspect the pro-EU brigade like to spread this scare story that suddenly our EU markets would stop, but little would change.
Then there are all those other non-EU countries with which the EU limits our trade. Those markets would do well.
Yes but wouldn't it be more expensive to trade with the likes of New Zealand and China (especially for small businesses) than it is trading with nearby European countries?
The EU.
Before we joined the EU, we traded freely with all nations. Now we are told what trade links we can set up and how much we can do. When there is all that trade out there, it is crazy to have to turn it down. Trading only within the EU is like being told you can only shop at certain shops - it strangles choice and damages your economy.
It would actually become cheeper to buy from outside the eu than it does now. At present. If we want to buy from china, for example, we have to pay an import tax because china is outside the eu.
Then theres the question of who is writing our trade deals. Suppose canada can sell product x for £10 per ton. Britain negotiates a trade deal and gets x for £10 per ton. But britain cant write its own trade deals. They have to be negotiated by brussels. Italy sells product x for £12 per ton. Therefore, to protect the italian market the eu trade deal with canada will stipulate buyers to pay compensation to italy and set quotas on how much product x each member state can import from canada.
Its better if we write our own trade deals because we can taylor them specificly to us and get the best deal possible.
Better reading than the Telegraph article are the comments following it.
Yet if the CBI said the way to grow the economy was to remove all employment legislation including things like holiday, maternity, disability access rights etc, you're the sort who'd be first in line to tell us we should do exactly as they say.
Funny that.
I was thinking more along the lines of the cost of transporting goods being more expensive.
Would it cost a lot more to transport goods from/to places like China and New Zealand than it does from countries nearer to us.
But we wouldn't stop trading with these 'nearer countries', we'd carry on with them and add more trade from other countries. When it comes to trade, more is better, and the other links you make via those countries are valuable.
But would EU countries want to trade with us?
How would it benefit EU countries to trade with us when they would be putting money into the EU but we wouldn't ?
Given that we have a trade deficit with them, why not? - after all if they decided that they were not going to sell us any more BMW's, Mercedes, Renaults etc who is going to be worse off?
The people who like to drive BMW's, Mercedes and Renault's.
My own opinion is that we would be better off if we had never joined the EU in the first place. At least then we would have continued to abide by our own rules instead of EU rules.