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Should we have left the EU?


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Merkles having a hard time keeping germany on its feet to "sort" out the trade deals outside her borders and will be concentrating on a way to force the nay sayers into supporting giving more money to the EU

Edited by chesters1

Believe NOTHING anyones says or writes unless you witness it yourself and even then your eyes can deceive you

None of this "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" crap it just means i have at least two enemies!

 

There is only one opinion i listen to ,its mine and its ALWAYS right even when its wrong

 

Its far easier to curse the darkness than light one candle

 

Mathew 4:19

Grangers law : anything i say will  turn out the opposite or not happen at all!

Life insurance? you wont enjoy a penny!

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." Thomas Jefferson

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Who actually trades solely under WTO rules?

James Hardy

Oct 21, 2017 · 4 min read

WTO Flag © World Trade Organisation

The likelihood of the UK crashing out of the EU seems to be increasing with every step of the negotiation.

For those of us that believe in the merits of the EU, this would be a disaster, but the counter point used by some opponents of the EU[1] is that, even if we leave with no deal, we can fall back onto the tariffs agreed under the World Trade Organisation

Recently, the pro-brexit group Leave.EU shared an image sharing a claim made by Richard Tice. “WTO rules are what most great countries trade under. If it’s good enough for Australia, America and Canada, it’s good enough for the UK”

When I saw this, I was a little skeptical. I know that America and Canada are both in a Free Trade Area with Mexico, and Canada’s Free-Trade agreement with the EU has only just come into effect. I wasn’t too sure about Australia, but I looked it up. Turns out they have free-trade agreements with China, South Korea, the USA, New Zealand and others. Couldn’t Mr Tice have come up with a better example?

For a geek like me who likes data, that seemed a like an interesting question: What is the biggest economy that does not have any Free Trade agreements other than membership in the WTO?

Manual Attempt

I figured this would be pretty easy. All I needed was to bring up the list of countries by GDP, and then search on Google for that country and the phrase “Free Trade agreement”

I got to number 20 (Saudi Arabia — a member of the Greater Arab Free Trade Area) before I got bored. Remembering Larry Wall’s first virtue (laziness) I decided to spend two hours writing a script to find the data for me rather than one hour going through the data.

The Script

Non-techies, please feel free to skip this section

So while Googling, I came across the WTO website which, it turns out, has a database of trade-agreements that member countries have notified them of. Unfortunately you can’t run arbitrary queries on the database, but luckily the countries were all referred to by their ISO-3166 numeric codes, therefore, if I took a list of countries, I could downloaded each one and read the list of agreements. For this I use the BeautifulSoup library and inserted the data into some simple Django models I created. I have uploaded the source code to GitHub in case anybody wants to play around with it.

The Results

Once I had the data, I could write a query to return all the countries that lacked any agreements. Upon running it, I found that many of the returned countries weren’t actually countries at all, but dependent territories like Bermuda and Puerto Rico. I therefore manually removed these. I was then left with this list:

Holy See

Mauritania

Monaco

Montenegro

Palau

Timor-Leste

Sao Tome and Principe

Serbia

Somalia

South Sudan

Sudan

Western Sahara

However again, I knew this wasn’t right Serbia and Montenegro are both members of CEFTA, so I investigated further. It turns out that neither are a member of WTO, which is why they have not notified the WTO of their agreements. So I then compared this list with a list of WTO members and removed any that were not members.

The next step would have been to order these by GDP, but that turned out to be unnecessary, as there is only one country in the world that trades only under WTO rules. That country:

MAURITANIA

For those of you not familiar with Mauritania, it’s GDP is $4,714million (0.2% of the UK’s), 50% of its exports consist of Iron Ore, and between 1% and 17% of the population still live in slavery.

It appears that this is the country that Leave.UK wish to emulate. I am afraid that this is not a vision for Britain’s future that I can share.

A more accurate image

Update

Others (thank you Alan Bell et al.) have take my work and investigated Mauritania further. It turns out that while they don’t have any current bilateral or multilateral free trade deals, it does benefit from preferential treatment from certain developed nations (the EU amongst them), where Mauritania’s exports in certain categories (everything but arms) are not charged import duties, but those countries goods can have tariffs added when being imported into Mauritania. As this is a form of aid for a developing country, I think that it is not something that the UK is likely to obtain, so for the purposes of debate referring to “no deal” as the “Mauritania Option” is not entirely inaccurate and could be a useful shorthand.

[1] Though by no means all, the Leave Alliance for example describe a no-deal as “akin with performing separation surgery on conjoined twins with a hammer and chisel without anaesthetic, hoping that the weaker one will live.”

Trade

Wto

Brexit

Politics

Django

2.1Kclaps

WRITTEN BY

James Hardy

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London-Based Web developer originally from Essex. Radical Liberal, Confirmed Geek, Proud European. Not the animator, that’s @TheWeebl

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1 hour ago, leedafeeder said:

Be like Mauritania. Where 17 per cent of the population live under slavery.

But Mauritania is a member state of the Arab League (similar in many ways to the EU), most of what you suggested about them trading on WTO terms is pure bulllshit (they have multible trade agreements with other African nations as well as the EU), and they have a "Fisheries partnership agreement" with the EU that (SURPRISE SURPRISE) allows the EU fleet  to fish in Mauritanian waters for shrimp, demersal fish, tuna and small pelagic fish, up to a total of 287,050 tonnes a year.

No, lets not be like Mauritania. It's far too much like staying in the EU.

Edited by Ken L

Species caught in 2020: Barbel. European Eel. Bleak. Perch. Pike.

Species caught in 2019: Pike. Bream. Tench. Chub. Common Carp. European Eel. Barbel. Bleak. Dace.

Species caught in 2018: Perch. Bream. Rainbow Trout. Brown Trout. Chub. Roach. Carp. European Eel.

Species caught in 2017: Siamese carp. Striped catfish. Rohu. Mekong catfish. Amazon red tail catfish. Arapaima. Black Minnow Shark. Perch. Chub. Brown Trout. Pike. Bream. Roach. Rudd. Bleak. Common Carp.

Species caught in 2016: Siamese carp. Jullien's golden carp. Striped catfish. Mekong catfish. Amazon red tail catfish. Arapaima. Alligator gar. Rohu. Black Minnow Shark. Roach, Bream, Perch, Ballan Wrasse. Rudd. Common Carp. Pike. Zander. Chub. Bleak.

Species caught in 2015: Brown Trout. Roach. Bream. Terrapin. Eel. Barbel. Pike. Chub.

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Leedafeeder,

What an interesting diatribe.

May I ask since the UK GDP consists of -  " In 2018, agriculture contributed around 0.63 percent to the United Kingdom's GDP, 17.51 percent came from the manufacturing industry, and 71.04 percent from the services sector.Jan 23, 2020"

what logical attachment does  the UK have to your EXAMPLE NATION? The only guess I might have is that UK citizens certainly are slaves to the EU right now? What else?

In conjunction with the World Bank WTO also trades in the service sector. Could that have a bearing on the UK's short term future?

Phone

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Merkel bullying Johnson ? oh dear dear me what a pudding Johnson is love this brexit fiasco,  the bulk of U.K. business has warned Johnson a no deal is a disaster to Britain , but is brexit a disaster to Britain ? but what’s new with this incompetent government keep it up Johnson the trend is consistent keep banging those nails in .

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1303457/Brexit-news-UK-EU-Michel-Barnier-trade-talks-Germany-Angela-Merkel-latest

? only in Britain U.K. fishermen let’s sell all OUR  quota to foreign boats then cry about its brilliant absolute brilliant the public lied to time and time again but not to long  go now till the **** hits the fan I wish they would hurry up with the sellout announcement the suspense is ElectrIc.

We will give way and pretend it’s a victory ?

https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2019/03/07/fishing-brexit-uk-fleetwood/

Edited by big_cod

http://sea-otter2.co.uk/

Probably Whitby's most consistent charterboat

Untitled-1.jpg

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July is here ,now its up to the EU to come to heel or we go out with no deal and by september as thats the latest the EU has to get it through their members

Hopefully the UK Switzerland financial services deal goes ahead it will get right up the EU's nose and show them the power they think they have is pie in the sky

I have no doubt the uk government will give away far more than it admits but hopefully its less than labour would and less than everything if the libs took power!

Edited by chesters1

Believe NOTHING anyones says or writes unless you witness it yourself and even then your eyes can deceive you

None of this "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" crap it just means i have at least two enemies!

 

There is only one opinion i listen to ,its mine and its ALWAYS right even when its wrong

 

Its far easier to curse the darkness than light one candle

 

Mathew 4:19

Grangers law : anything i say will  turn out the opposite or not happen at all!

Life insurance? you wont enjoy a penny!

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." Thomas Jefferson

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Share on other sites

5 hours ago, big_cod said:

We thats it upto 3 MILLION HONG KONG nationals can come here and they cry  about EU nationals coming to work  here  ?, all those foreigners from the Far East  given free access to benefits , healthcare housing etc etc etc welcomed with open arms by the Tory party ,But the government  need all those bodies to fill the place of all EU nationals leaving In droves because of brexit out you go in you come ?

There could be a massive influx of new Chinese restaurants springing up  throughout Britain plenty of spare ribs ? apparently there favourite place of refuge when settling  here according to reports is  the Isle of Wight ? and Leeds ?

I wonder what sort of points system will apply here or  maybe Just maybe it won’t apply tough on immigration .?

This brexit thing and immigration is making real sense now ?

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-welcomes-hong-kongers-22284037

Oh shut up you tit!

  • Haha 1

Species caught in 2020: Barbel. European Eel. Bleak. Perch. Pike.

Species caught in 2019: Pike. Bream. Tench. Chub. Common Carp. European Eel. Barbel. Bleak. Dace.

Species caught in 2018: Perch. Bream. Rainbow Trout. Brown Trout. Chub. Roach. Carp. European Eel.

Species caught in 2017: Siamese carp. Striped catfish. Rohu. Mekong catfish. Amazon red tail catfish. Arapaima. Black Minnow Shark. Perch. Chub. Brown Trout. Pike. Bream. Roach. Rudd. Bleak. Common Carp.

Species caught in 2016: Siamese carp. Jullien's golden carp. Striped catfish. Mekong catfish. Amazon red tail catfish. Arapaima. Alligator gar. Rohu. Black Minnow Shark. Roach, Bream, Perch, Ballan Wrasse. Rudd. Common Carp. Pike. Zander. Chub. Bleak.

Species caught in 2015: Brown Trout. Roach. Bream. Terrapin. Eel. Barbel. Pike. Chub.

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12 hours ago, Ken L said:

Oh shut up you tit!

Go on Ken great this brexit fiasco ? they couldn’t organise a ****-up in a brewery and that magical 3 million figure crack on boris ?

Edited by big_cod

http://sea-otter2.co.uk/

Probably Whitby's most consistent charterboat

Untitled-1.jpg

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