Tag Archives: WTO

Derision for Liam Fox as he’s knocked out of race to lead World Trade Organisation

Liam Fox: bye bye.

Tory joke candidate Liam Fox has been knocked out of the race to become director-general of the World Trade Organisation.

According to the Torygraph, the former international trade secretary was eliminated before the last of three rounds to replace Roberto Azevedo, who stepped down a year earlier than expected at the end of August, so

Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and South Korea’s Yoo Myung-hee will go head-to-head to become the trade body’s first female director-general

The reaction has been what you might expect, considering the person involved.

Fox was forced out of an early David Cameron cabinet for letting a friend of his, Adam Werrity, into confidential defence meetings and taking him on foreign junkets.

He has since crept back into Tory cabinets and was Theresa May’s International Trade secretary.

But he is widely held to be another inept Tory fool.

So the reaction to his WTO failure was clear:

Despite his abject ineptitude, Fox seems to be one of the survivors of the modern Tory Party, having managed to hang on in Parliament and in government circles for the last 10 years and more.

Let us hope this finishes him off and he retires to the obscurity he so richly deserves.

Source: Liam Fox knocked out of race to lead World Trade Organisation

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Boris’s Brexit border plans could make UK a laughing-stock, says MP best-known for obsession with cheese

Liz Truss: the queen of cheese is warning that Boris Johnson’s Brexit will cause serious problems.

Boris Johnson’s Brexit border plans could break international trading rules, risk the UK’s international credibility, and lead to smuggling from the European Union, it has been alleged.

And just so you know this is a serious matter, the warning comes in a leaked letter written by the minister best-known – and ridiculed – for her own unnatural obsession with cheese.

Liz Truss – for it was she – outlined four “key areas of concerns” [sic] about the government’s plans to leave EU trading and custom rules at the end of 2020, in a letter to Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove.

Here’s UK Business Insider:

Truss said the plans could create a series of logistical, political, and reputational risks for the government, including:

  • A legal challenge from the World Trade Organisation.
  • Increased smuggling from the EU if not all UK ports are ready to carry out checks.
  • Concerns over the union if EU tariffs are applied to all goods heading to Northern Ireland by “default.”
  • The undermining of the UK’s international trade policy.

The whole is likely to make the UK even more of an international laughing-stock than it is now – and that’s frankly amazing because other nations have been laughing at us for years.

They can see what happens when a nation falls into neoliberal decline for more than 40 years.

By the end, it has no public services to call its own, no manufacturing industry, no trading partners, no talent and no credibility.

And the members of the Tory government are prime examples of the philosophy that led to this collapse.

Source: Leaked Liz Truss letter says Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans risk legal challenge – Business Insider

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Don’t believe the lie: UK can NOT have 10 years’ free trade with EU post-Brexit

Here’s a nasty little lie somebody’s been putting about:

I hope you haven’t been gullible enough to believe it.

Chances are that you might have been fooled if you read Politico…

… or The Express…

… or listen to Jacob Rees-Mogg.

It refers to Article XXIV of the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which you can read here.

The suggestion is that trading terms at the formation of a customs union between two territories, or during an interim period prior to the introduction of such a union, may not be higher than previously existed between those countries, and that there must be a plan to form a full customs union within “a reasonable length of time”.

How that translates into saying that the EU must offer the UK continued free trade for at least 10 years is anybody’s guess!

I think The Independent was right when it said the people coming forward with this nonsense had got it backwards:

“Trade experts say this covers the circumstances of two countries forming a new trade agreement, not of them leaving one. And they insist that those who cite it as a reason why nothing has to change on trade after Brexit are labouring under a gross misunderstanding of the rule.

“’The idea that Article XXIV…somehow obliges the EU to continue providing the full benefits of the single market for the next ten years, or even allows the UK to unilaterally offer the EU (and no one else) market access is preposterous,’ says Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former Australian trade negotiator.

“In any case the overriding concern of industry resulting from a no-deal Brexit is not actually tariffs but the negative impact of border checks resulting from leaving the EU’s customs union and single market.”

So if anybody tries to tell you that a “no deal” Brexit is no problem because free trade will continue, you tell them they’re either fatally weak-minded or a damned liar.

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James Delingpole: clueless Brextremist comes unstuck over ‘no deal’ and WTO rules

Rich and clueless: James Delingpole thinks Brexit is a hit worth taking – because he won’t be taking that hit.

In one of the few appearances James Delingpole has made on This Site, he is quoted as saying he smoked cannabis while listening to Supertramp with David Cameron while they were both at Oxford – and one would be forgiven for asking whether he went back on the whacky baccy before appearing on Andrew Neil’s This Week to support a ‘no deal’ Brexit.

Mr Delingpole made a short film extolling the virtues of reverting to World Trade Organisation rules on trade and tariffs between countries, and then appeared in the studio for an interview in which Mr Neil, Caroline Flint and Sam Gyimah – who quit his job as a government minister over Theresa May’s Brexit deal – exposed his attitude as nonsense. Watch:

For accuracy: The hysterical laughter at the end of the clip was added by whoever made it; in reality, Andrew Neil said, “Okay. Well, that’s honest – and on that, we’ll move on. Thank you.”

But we can’t move on.

Mr Delingpole has admitted that his claims are based on nothing but hot air.

Under WTO rules, a country like the UK would have to accept an automatic level of tariffs on all goods coming in and going out. If we chose to waive those tariffs, they would be waived on all trade, and there would be no point in trying to strike free trade deals.

For a net importer like the UK, both situations mean we lose money.

That’s why Mr Delingpole said, “We’re going to take a hit”. But is it a “hit worth taking”?

No! At least, not for ordinary working people. The privileged rich, like Mr Delingpole, may find themselves able to accommodate it.

Rod Thistledown McKie made this point on Twitter: “The thing about those “taking a hit” is they don’t include the likes of Delingpole himself. They are working class voters, for instance Airbus’s 100,000 workers estimate, and they are going to be very, very annoyed with the people who promised them the Earth.”

Airbus has slated the Conservative government’s failure to negotiate a workable Brexit deal, warning that it may leave the UK if Theresa May forces the UK to crash out of the EU with no deal. Airbus employs 14,000 people in the UK, with a further 110,000 in its supply chain.

That’s 124,000 jobs in jeopardy.

None of those jobs are held by Mr Delingpole, of course.

But he, and his Brextremist ilk – like James Dyson, who is famously scarpering to Singapore to build his latest invention which has been dubbed a “moral vacuum”, taking his company’s Corporation Tax contributions with him – did promise those people a brighter future.

And now they are walking away, leaving a huge mess behind them, in the knowledge that they won’t be taking the hit.

And people are going to be angry. This response, for example, is mild:

https://twitter.com/Wirral_In_It/status/1088745468845273089

Should we not be talking about imposing penalties on people who talked up the fictitious benefits of Brexit in order to induce the electorate to support it – when they did not have good reason to do so?

Is there no way to force them to put their money where there mouths have been?

And if not, why not? Poor people stand to lose everything – why should the clueless rich get away scot free?

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May’s Brexit disaster goes unreported as Britain is blocked from $1.7 TRILLION in WTO projects | Pride’s Purge

This is very important from Pride’s Purge – but take a look at some of the countries that have blocked the UK from access to this $1.7 trillion market.

For example – the USA. Isn’t Theresa May cosying up to the States, in the hope that Donald Trump will provide succour to the UK in its years of need post-Brexit?

Here we see that country kicking the UK in the metaphorical teeth.

And the UK’s slavishly-Tory mass media have said nothing about it.

You are being betrayed by your government and by those who are supposed to hold it to account.

Theresa May’s kowtowing to the hard Brexiters in her party may have just cost the UK $1.7 Trillion of access to international projects after Brexit.

The U.S., New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Ukraine, Israel and Moldova have all blocked Britain’s post-Brexit entry into the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement, a market worth $1.7 Trillion.

And while the first six big players on that list may eventually (after perhaps years of hard negotiations) give in with separate trade deals, with the last one – the small country of Moldova – it’s unlikely.

Because it’s personal.

Visit Pride’s Purge for the full story: May’s Brexit disaster unreported by UK press: Britain BLOCKED from $1.7 Trillion in WTO projects | Pride’s Purge

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