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The now-enacted will of (some of) the people


blandy

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25 minutes ago, colhint said:

So if the above 2 posts are true, then the worst we can expect is the same deal as the EU get.  So  how do you get to the position 

I'm pretty sure most of them are worse. 

I don't know mate. Ask all those people who are moaning because their businesses are going down the tube because they can't sell their shit anymore.  The stories are pretty thick and fast, maybe you can touch base with them on social media and ask how come the new trade deals aren't helping them.   Maybe they will have a different explanation.  The deals are great but I can't sell my stuff because of summat else. 

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5 minutes ago, colhint said:

Got it. Thanks. We sign a trade deal and France get the jobs and money.

The two events are totally unconnected. The FTA with Australia and a US/UK/Aus defence pact are not remotely connected.

Sales of military hardware are really not in the realm of FTAs

France intially beat Germany and Japan to get the original sub deal, which FTA was that a consequence of?

 

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Are you sure?  So we and the EU could make and sell nuclear bombs to North Korea Russia and China and have no consequences within NATO, because it's just a free trade agreement and military hardware is not in that realm. 

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Major defence pacts are usually separate from trade deals (though trade deals do usually have elements in them that affect defence - you don't usually openly trade with enemies). The AUKUS deal isn't really a trade deal, it's a strategic defence pact that happens to include an element of a trade deal (i.e. they'll be buying some kit from UK and US companies as part of it). But first and foremost it's a military pact. Free trade hasn't got anything to do with it. Theres not really a market for nuclear submarines, as such.

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just responding to the question above. 

There's not really a market for nuclear subs worth but the French think it's worth $90b

So Is there a market for Ferrari's when it takes 30 years to reach that figure. 

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4 minutes ago, colhint said:

Well the French thought it was worth about $90b according to the Guardian. So about 30 years turnover for Ferrari, so I guess there is no market for Ferrari cars then.

Does AUKUS potentially bring in a lot of money? Yes. Nuclear submarines, all the associated costs and defensive cooperation expenditure will bring significant money into the US and UK.

Is the money the point? No. The point is the wider strategic goal. The money is a secondary boon.

Is the sale of extremely high end strategic military assets the same as more or less any other form of trade? No. You can't compare selling consumer goods to selling limited numbers of multi billion pound items that have strategic military value. Whilst it's still ultimately the trade of goods, they are so different, so outside of a consumer economic market, that they're irrelevant. It's so different it's a different game, with different rules, different priorities etc etc.

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2 minutes ago, colhint said:

just responding to the question above. 

There's not really a market for nuclear subs worth but the French think it's worth $90b

So Is there a market for Ferrari's when it takes 30 years to reach that figure. 

Why are you talking about Ferraris? They don't have anything to do with anything. I'm sure, if you stopped and thought about it for a minute or two, you could work out some meaningful differences between purchasing cars and nuclear submarines.

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ok Its about 4 and a quarter  years of Morrisons turnover. Forget cars, There is quite clearly a market for nuclear subs.  These subs can last 25 years with a reactor, but does Nato want 25 year old technology on them. They will need upgrading and replacing, doubt a dial up internet still cuts it.

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34 minutes ago, colhint said:

ok Its about 4 and a quarter  years of Morrisons turnover. Forget cars, There is quite clearly a market for nuclear subs.  These subs can last 25 years with a reactor, but does Nato want 25 year old technology on them. They will need upgrading and replacing, doubt a dial up internet still cuts it.

What relevance is company turnover, of Ferrari or Morrisons or anything else?

You keep changing points for other points in a baffling flurry. You were initially saying we had sold nuclear submarines to Australia because of a 'free trade deal', which wasn't true, but now the argument has shifted to 'there is a market for nuclear subs'. I mean, depending how you define 'a market for' that could be true for almost anything, but what does it have to do with free trade deals?

The purpose of liberalising trading rules is to facilitate commerce between two or more countries. It is for the benefit of companies, not governments; governments do not need a trade deal to make an arms sale, nor are governments answerable to the same rules as companies. Free trade deals are principally concerned with removing tariffs and quotas, neither of which are relevant concepts when it comes to the manufacture and sale of nuclear submarines. The Australian government would have to purchase nuclear submarines from a government, not a company, because nuclear submarines are obviously not a commercially available product. They could place an order with any government that had the capacity and desire to build those submarines, whether or not they had a specific trade deal in place with that country.

This is really nothing at all like Ferraris, still less your supermarket groceries.

Edited by HanoiVillan
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I think the AUKAS deal was to a large extent about the deal - it was US arms firm lobbyists insisting that we come together to fight off the global threat of well, other arms lobbyists. I think the pact was secondary as a justification - the US is run by lobbyists, not people who are strategically planning geopolitics, those people just try and squeeze in when they can.

That makes it primarily a deal. That doesn't make it a trade deal, it's not a deal that's in place for all future transactions between nations or blocs and it has no bearing on the trade between companies that operate in those blocks, it doesn't set rules, laws or tariffs for trade, it's a one off correction to an English speaking nation accidentally not putting enough of its budget into the US arms industry.

The bloke on the corner selling you a Ferrari doesn't make him a Ferrari dealer and it doesn't mean that there's an agreement in place for all of Ferrari's future transactions with everyone you know.

 

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12 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

What relevance is company turnover, of Ferrari or Morrisons or anything else?

You keep changing points for other points in a baffling flurry. You were initially saying we had sold nuclear submarines to Australia because of a 'free trade deal', which wasn't true, but now the argument has shifted to 'there is a market for nuclear subs'. I mean, depending how you define 'a market for' that could be true for almost anything, but what does it have to do with free trade deals?

The purpose of liberalising trading rules is to facilitate commerce between two or more countries. It is for the benefit of companies, not governments; governments do not need a trade deal to make an arms sale, nor are governments answerable to the same rules as companies. The Australian government would have to purchase nuclear submarines from a government, because nuclear submarines are obviously not a commercially available product. They could place an order with any government that had the capacity and desire to build those submarines, whether or not they had a specific trade deal in place with that country.

This is really nothing at all like Ferraris, still less your supermarket groceries.

No I didn't say we sold Subs to the Aussies because of a trade deal. I said after the trade deal the Aussies moved the business to us.

If it is for the benefit of companies why do countrys apply tarrifs. You cannot put a tax or tariff on a company and then say it is for yor benefit

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2 minutes ago, colhint said:

If it is for the benefit of companies why do countrys apply tarrifs. You cannot put a tax or tariff on a company and then say it is for yor benefit

If the French put a tariff on the import of Prosecco, does it not benefit the Champagne industry?

 

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6 minutes ago, colhint said:

No I didn't say we sold Subs to the Aussies because of a trade deal. I said after the trade deal the Aussies moved the business to us.

Okay, but that should be tipping you off that the reason deals like this happen is because they are *diplomatic gestures*, rather than because of any kind of commercial logic.

7 minutes ago, colhint said:

If it is for the benefit of companies why do countrys apply tarrifs. You cannot put a tax or tariff on a company and then say it is for yor benefit

A tariff is another word for a tax. They are taxes on either raw materials or finished goods. The main reason a country imposes a tariff is to protect a domestic industry from foreign competition.

Again, nuclear submarines do not fit this at all. The only possible buyers and sellers are governments, so why would they tax themselves? What would that achieve, that could not be more sensibly achieved by adjusting the price of the submarine in the first place?* Similarly, there is no domestic nuclear submarine manufacturing industry to protect in Australia; if there was then they wouldn't need to order them from other countries.

*This is not to say that there couldn't be tariffs involved in the process at any stage; in making the submarine, we might use some raw material or other imported from somewhere with a tariff on it or whatever. But there are no nuclear submarine tariffs.

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