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Do you think there will be a Deal or No Deal?

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    194
  • Poll closed .
Full bodied red said:
UK trade with Germany is a strange one.

What does the UK sell to Germany ? I've no idea, and I've had a few too many full bodied reds tonight to be bothered researching, so maybe you can list it for us.

Meanwhile, I suggest you look around your home/office and have a look what's there that was made in Germany - my wife's German and we often joke about this, beause the only thing in our house is usually just a few bottles of Becks - and I reckon there's not much which are daily essentials to everyday living that couldn't be replaced by something made somewhere else and which would probabaly be an awful lot cheaper.

If, on the other hand, you consider very expensive but highest quality cars and power tools as daily essentials, then you obviously have more money than me.

Of all the EU countries, Germany has the biggest risk if there is no Trade Deal between the UK and the EU.
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Well, besides cars & power tools Germany exports nothing to the UK. Well, you do have companies like Beiersdorf and Bayer that sell all kinds consumer brands found in every household in the U.K., but apart from that noth... oh yeah there's the electronic giants like Siemens & Bosch etc who do a roaring trade in the U.K. market, but apart fro.. and the big industrial companies like Thyssen Krupp, BASF and Continental... and you've got mega financial institutions like Deutsche Bank and Allianz, or even your sport clothing fron Adidas.. but apart from that you couldn't say that the Germans do that well in the U.K.

:wenger::wenger::wenger::wenger:
 
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Stanley Road said:
I kind of admired Bruce Dickinson of iron maiden, when he was asked if he thought it was wrong to live in a tax haven and not contribute to inland revenue in the UK.

He replied that he'd be quite happy to pay taxes if he could decide what they are spent on, until then he wont pay a penny.

So if you are happy to give money to NOT farm then that's a wonderful idea, I am not
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Without subsidies a lot of farmers will go out of business. Also regulating the market to not overproduce in one area is beneficial for the environment.

I'm generally for the free market but it doesn't seem like a good idea for the country to let our farmers go out of business and then be too heavily reliant on imports, or indeed to neglect a situation where the water supply is getting unnecessarily polluted because we're over producing certain products.

What other solution would you propose?
 
Full bodied red said:
No...Germany exports billions-worth every week.

What I'm saying is that despite a shit FXRate and potential tariffs, your everyday household bill won't increase because of stuff you HAVE to buy from Germany, even though the UK is Germany's second largest export market and annual UK trade with Germany is about €15 billion negative in favour of Germany.

So on two counts ( German goods will perhaps become too expensive and none are really everday necessities anyway ) lack of free trade between the UK and Germany will hurt Germany for sure. I don't know what the UK exports to Germany, I was hoping you'd tell us so that we could make a judgement whether the sales will dip without a trade deal....That's all.

From the UK in our house ? Off the top of my head, some gin, some English wine, some HiFi equipment, probably some fish landed in the UK, and that's about it, really. The diesel in the cars might be from the North Sea, certainly not from Germany or France.
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UK does export plenty to Germany, just a couple of examples:
-Jet Engines
-Cars
-Electronics
-Medicines
-All sorts of financial services

The really weird thing about all the complaints about Germany: The Dutch have a per capita trade surplus with UK that is double of the German surplus. Complaining about the Dutch doesn't work as well, i'll give you that. You currently don't HAVE to buy anything from Germany either, people choose too. Lufthansa doesn't HAVE to buy Trent engines either, but lets hope it will continue to have the choice to do so, if it's whats best for them. UK sales to Germany will definitely dip without a trade deal, as will the trade the other way around. No one will be better off for it.
 
The UK is saturated with German brands ffs! Nivea, Tui, Lidl, Haribo, T-Mobile, Puma, Braun, Persil, DHL, the list is friggin endless!!! Jesus kin Christ...
 
Full bodied red said:
I suspect that the UK and the Commonwealth countries will already secretly be discussing what they can do together once the UK leaves the evil EU and the shackles of the CAP. And probably the UK has spent the past six months talking to China, India, Japan, tc, but secretly you understand, because while the UK remains a member of the evil EU they are not allowed to.
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Better keep it quiet or they may get kicked out.

Oh wait ......
 
Whatever detail you cling to it is an utter no brainer that trade in both directions will be harder and more expensive. The chances of other non-EU nations making up for the losses and without tariffs is delusional at best. The idea that we are getting away from evil bureaucrats is also laughable - just see how the Tory led charge on workers rights, education, health, social security and human rights works out without EU protections. The practicalities of leaving in terms of border controls alone will be an expensive and chaotic thing to behold. No hard border between Eire and NI will mean we don't have this extra control on our border in any meaningful way anyway and in any case the migration we want to control is non-EU anyway. Then you have the whinging about things like British fishemen suffering. Overall we do better than any other country. The whining is hen we have to share British waters but you don't hear about all the fishing we do in other country's waters. The real problem with fishing is that we have all fecked the ticks by generations of over-fishing.

All in all an utter clusterfeck and a clusterfeck we have wandered into without a plan. If countries were people the UK would currently be Lord Percy thinking of playing the mindless optimism card very strongly.
 
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Rams said:
I guess we could sell lots of cluster bombs to the rest of the world Wibs!
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I know you aren't entirely serious, but it really isn't that bad:
Economy_of_the_United_Kingdom

Ahh I can't get it to work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econo...14_United_Kingdom_Products_Export_Treemap.png

There's no one product dominating the UK export, but there's still loads of exporting going on.
 
Rams said:
So Germany is Britain's biggest import partner. But not to worry, we'll be able to replace it all with shampoo from India or headphones from New Zeeland.
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Yeah I was surprised by that one too.
 
Mozza said:
What about their family? The wife might not earn so much. The kids will need schooling. Are they allowed in too?
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Of course their family can come, immediate family anyway. It is a way of getting talent into the country and that will add value to the economy ultimately. It is the low skilled workers with lots of dependents that are unappealling.

We need to retain Eastern European immigration which an immediate threat as they are our most productive citizens due to being generally young, childless and leaving the country after a period. They pay tax and create low burden on the state.

@Rams

After a period on economic contraction and adjustment new markets will open up. Do you think that the UK is incapable of recovering from Brexit?
 
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Tarrou said:
What other solution would you propose?
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Let them go out of business

Will I get an eu subsidy if I lose my job?

I'd really like to see the real price of goods without subsidies, what things really cost without slave labour, what the world would be like if we let banks fail, what tariff free trade for the whole world would look like.
 
Stanley Road said:
Let them go out of business

Will I get an eu subsidy if I lose my job?

I'd really like to see the real price of goods without subsidies, what things really cost without slave labour, what the world would be like if we let banks fail, what tariff free trade for the whole world would look like.
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Without slave labour effectively means a whole deal of regulation.
 
Stanley Road said:
Let them go out of business

Will I get an eu subsidy if I lose my job?

I'd really like to see the real price of goods without subsidies, what things really cost without slave labour, what the world would be like if we let banks fail, what tariff free trade for the whole world would look like.
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Well tariff free trade would give access to slave labour to lots of British companies surely?

Edit: and just to clarify, I don't necessarily disagree with you, just highlighting that the solutions aren't always as simple as "free trade".
 
Classical Mechanic said:
After a period on economic contraction and adjustment new markets will open up. Do you think that the UK is incapable of recovering from Brexit?
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The UK will recover from this act of stupidity and self sabotage, most likely by rejoining the EU on worse conditions than those we exited with in 10 years or so. In the mean time I'm pretty sure my pension will take a kicking at the point of my career when it needs to be performing at its best to guarantee I have a comfortable retirement and don't become a burden on the state. The affect on my daughter's generation, just starting out in their careers is likely to be equally devastating as the already shallow pools of opportunity in front of them dry up. The affect on those less well off than us will most likely be far, far worse and the social divide which is at least part of the cause of this whole mess is likely to get a hell of a lot wider.

People recover from cancer, TB, meningitis etc but they're not queuing up volunteering to go through it just for the hell of it.
 
Chorley1974 said:
Cost you more? You simply don't know. Both the remain and brexit campaigns were full of spurious shit like this. You won't actually know until the deal is done, and the effects are measured over a period afterwards.

As to the last point, pure conjecture. It's like saying the poor working class don't contribute anything and therefore shouldn't have a voice?
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It's already costing us more because of I N F L A T I O N!

We are an importing nation and everything imported is costing more. We had a negative trade balance of about £180bn in 2015 this is why the government is trying very hard to push exports during this period of Brexit purgatory so the blow to the economy is softened somewhat. This is why every third ad on TV and radio is "Exporting is great".

Every trip and holiday abroad is costing more.

Every drop of fuel and everything linked to it is costing more.

I could go on and on about everything that is costing more but hopefully you get the gist.

This is already happening, so not when the deal will be done but now!
 
Stanley Road said:
Let them go out of business

Will I get an eu subsidy if I lose my job?

I'd really like to see the real price of goods without subsidies, what things really cost without slave labour, what the world would be like if we let banks fail, what tariff free trade for the whole world would look like.
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Incentives are required when governments push certain policies, ro give people a push into abiding by them. Not so long ago the government was paying £5000 towards the cost of buying plug-in electric cars. They were paying £5000 towards the cost of businesses getting superfast broadband. They provide numerous other grants for small businesses and large ones. Why should farmers be any different?
 
Bury Red said:
The UK will recover from this act of stupidity and self sabotage, most likely by rejoining the EU on worse conditions than those we exited with in 10 years or so. In the mean time I'm pretty sure my pension will take a kicking at the point of my career when it needs to be performing at its best to guarantee I have a comfortable retirement and don't become a burden on the state. The affect on my daughter's generation, just starting out in their careers is likely to be equally devastating as the already shallow pools of opportunity in front of them dry up. The affect on those less well off than us will most likely be far, far worse and the social divide which is at least part of the cause of this whole mess is likely to get a hell of a lot wider.

People recover from cancer, TB, meningitis etc but they're not queuing up volunteering to go through it just for the hell of it.
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:lol: I do love a good buryred metaphor with the hyperbole turned up to 11!

I have faith in the UK economy and people. I don't think we will go back to the EU with begging bowl in hand as you suggest. I think it is more likely the EU will break up completely than the UK rejoin in the next 25 years.

What are these worse terms that you think we will have to accept if we rejoin anyway?
 
Classical Mechanic said:
:lol: I do love a good buryred metaphor with the hyperbole turned up to 11!

I have faith in the UK economy and people. I don't think we will go back to the EU with begging bowl in hand as you suggest. I think it is more likely the EU will break up completely than the UK rejoin in the next 25 years.

What are these worse terms that you think we will have to accept if we rejoin anyway?
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No more rebates, fewer votes giving us a smaller voice and most likely full acceptance of schengen. We had the best deal of anyone sitting at the European table, no way we would get the same hand again if we approached them seeking re-entry.
 
Bury Red said:
No more rebates, fewer votes giving us a smaller voice and most likely full acceptance of schengen. We had the best deal of anyone sitting at the European table, no way we would get the same hand again if we approached them seeking re-entry.
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I agree that we had a good deal and leaving was broadly pointless and damaging in the short to medium term. But here we are.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
@Rams

After a period on economic contraction and adjustment new markets will open up. Do you think that the UK is incapable of recovering from Brexit?
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Let me look in my crystal ball...

I don't think recover is the right word, but I think things will never be the same.
Firstly, I think the U.K. will dissolve. I think the Scots will become independent and Ireland will unite. Then there's the question whether we remain in the single market or under what terms we will have access to it.
If we are no longer part of the single market then I predict a recession as consumer goods become more expensive (we're not suddenly going to stop buying German goods) and the economy shrinks. What's left of the U.K. will probably become a tax haven. But it will become less influential and accelerate our role as bit part players on the World stage. Meanwhile, the divisions in society will only widen as the gap between rich & poor widens. The notion that we will open up trade with the rest of the World to compensate not being part of the single market is pure fantasy. We still need to protect our economy and we don't have much we can export anyway.
 
"Take back control"

"Make America great again"

"Take back control"

"Make Britain great again"

The Brexiteers are reminding me of a certain group of individuals who occupy the WH. Ramblings and mere slogans of politicians with personality disorders.
 
I just can't see how a deal can be achieved within 2 years. It takes longer for a couple with a few kids to achieve a divorce settlement here in the UK.
 
Seems the hard Brexiteers (those within government and the likes of Farage) are wanting to implement or copy policies Trump government is trying to establish. Basically, a hard Brexit that allows Britain to become a low-tax, low-regulation economy. They hardly care what taxes support. They'll not be sending their kids to state schools and very likely have private health insurance. They'll not suffer from any possible downturns.
 
Stanley Road said:
Let them go out of business

Will I get an eu subsidy if I lose my job?

I'd really like to see the real price of goods without subsidies, what things really cost without slave labour, what the world would be like if we let banks fail, what tariff free trade for the whole world would look like.
Click to expand...

Are you sure you want to see that? Because what an unregulated free market actually looks like is giant companies eating up smaller companies and monopolizing markets until you have no small providers left, and the customer has very little choice unless they want to pay twice as much for something as the giant company is selling for. And of course those giant companies don't really care about things like the environment, or workers rights or the effect of their policies on local communities because they're companies not governments.

It would be a very grey and bleak future.
 
Rams said:
Let me look in my crystal ball...

I don't think recover is the right word, but I think things will never be the same.
Firstly, I think the U.K. will dissolve. I think the Scots will become independent and Ireland will unite. Then there's the question whether we remain in the single market or under what terms we will have access to it.
If we are no longer part of the single market then I predict a recession as consumer goods become more expensive (we're not suddenly going to stop buying German goods) and the economy shrinks. What's left of the U.K. will probably become a tax haven. But it will become less influential and accelerate our role as bit part players on the World stage. Meanwhile, the divisions in society will only widen as the gap between rich & poor widens. The notion that we will open up trade with the rest of the World to compensate not being part of the single market is pure fantasy. We still need to protect our economy and we don't have much we can export anyway.
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The UK breaking up will be good for England. Northern Ireland especially is a political and economic millstone around our necks. Their budget deficit is frightening and one three jobs there are public sector to support their failing economy (the UK wide level of public sector jobs is less than 1/5) If Ireland want to absorb that problem then we should snap their hands off. The Scottish economy is suffering at the moment since the collapse in the price of oil and subsidies from Westminster are at record levels. Then you have the other core economic sector in Scotland which is finance largely based in Edinburgh. This sector is dependent on trade with England. That sector fears independence much more than Brexit and speculation of 'indyref2' has already seen investment fall and the first businesses have started relocating to England. To illustrate: Scotland are more dependent on trade with England than the UK is with the EU. Vast swathes of their economy, this is true for NI and Wales too, is dependent on trade with England and if they the leave the UK those businesses and job will come to the England. Beyond the symbolism of the breakup of Great Britain I am curious as to what you are worried about on that count?

I disagree with you on your point that the loss of the single market cannot be made up over time. The UK will adapt, inovate and prevail. The single market isn't some magic guarantee of economic success, that should be plainly evident by looking at the economic performace of most members of your single market EUtopia in recent history.

In fact I would bet you now that the UK will not perform much worse over the next five years than the French economy has performed since 2012. Also that unemployment will not reach the levels seen in France today.
 
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Rams said:
Well, besides cars & power tools Germany exports nothing to the UK. Well, you do have companies like Beiersdorf and Bayer that sell all kinds consumer brands found in every household in the U.K., but apart from that noth... oh yeah there's the electronic giants like Siemens & Bosch etc who do a roaring trade in the U.K. market, but apart fro.. and the big industrial companies like Thyssen Krupp, BASF and Continental... and you've got mega financial institutions like Deutsche Bank and Allianz, or even your sport clothing fron Adidas.. but apart from that you couldn't say that the Germans do that well in the U.K.

:wenger::wenger::wenger::wenger:
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OK...Good list...Just checked again and it seems we don't have any of that stuff in our house or use those service providers.

Then again, the French do have a feeling that their own goods and services are the best ( yes, I know they aren't, but that's the French ) so we still have a full range of French grown or made products, or French labels stuck on Chinese made stuff, to choose from, and which are usually chepaer than their German equivalents.
 
Kentonio said:
Are you sure you want to see that? Because what an unregulated free market actually looks like is giant companies eating up smaller companies and monopolizing markets until you have no small providers left, and the customer has very little choice unless they want to pay twice as much for something as the giant company is selling for. And of course those giant companies don't really care about things like the environment, or workers rights or the effect of their policies on local communities because they're companies not governments.

It would be a very grey and bleak future.
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I don't mind paying the real value of something no, the same way I don't mind paying 42% tax and having good services. Its a british mindset that wants everything good for free
 
Full bodied red said:
OK...Good list...Just checked again and it seems we don't have any of that stuff in our house or use those service providers.

Then again, the French do have a feeling that their own goods and services are the best ( yes, I know they aren't, but that's the French ) so we still have a full range of French grown or made products, or French labels stuck on Chinese made stuff, to choose from, and which are usually chepaer than their German equivalents.
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we have a bosch hoover and its shit, expensive too. Our 2nd no name hoover is great, 2000+ watt and half the price.
 
Full bodied red said:
OK...Good list...Just checked again and it seems we don't have any of that stuff in our house or use those service providers.

Then again, the French do have a feeling that their own goods and services are the best ( yes, I know they aren't, but that's the French ) so we still have a full range of French grown or made products, or French labels stuck on Chinese made stuff, to choose from, and which are usually chepaer than their German equivalents.
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Sample size of one. I'm convinced.
 
Fairly sure this is more economically complicated than "I don't have German goods in my house so we don't actually need German goods as a nation".

Also, given the UK is a first world state, "first world problems" are rather important to your econony. It's not like your society is built on sparse, spartan essentials.
 
Stanley Road said:
I don't mind paying the real value of something no, the same way I don't mind paying 42% tax and having good services. Its a british mindset that wants everything good for free
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Subsidies aren't all about the price of the good, when it comes to things like farming those subsidies allow a lot of small diverse farmers to exist where as in a totally free market they would inevitably be swallowed up or driven out of business by mega-farms with much bigger economies of scale. That could have a huge impact on local areas and communities and on the environment.
 
Germany is top of most European countries that they import from and some by a large margin. The rest of Europe and a weak Euro is more important to Germany than the UK no matter how much we import from them.

Germany top export countries are US and France and France are far higher than the UK. UK is third to fourth tied with a tiny country called Holland. We're not the biggest or the second biggest and the rest of Europe far outstrip us. We're talking about 500bn to our 80-90bn leaving out France and Holland.

What could be more of a factor is UK leaning toward non german cars in the future and this having a knock on effect in the media between US and so on.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
The UK breaking up will be good for England. Northern Ireland especially is a political and economic millstone around our necks. Their budget deficit is frightening and one three jobs there are public sector to support their failing economy (the UK wide level of public sector jobs is less than 1/5) If Ireland want to absorb that problem then we should snap their hands off. The Scottish economy is suffering at the moment since the collapse in the price of oil and subsidies from Westminster are at record levels. Then you have the other core economic sector in Scotland which is finance largely based in Edinburgh. This sector is dependent on trade with England. That sector fears independence much more than Brexit and speculation of 'indyref2' has already seen investment fall and the first businesses have started relocating to England. To illustrate: Scotland are more dependent on trade with England than the UK is with the EU. Vast swathes of their economy, this is true for NI and Wales too, is dependent on trade with England and if they the leave the UK those businesses and job will come to the England. Beyond the symbolism of the breakup of Great Britain I am curious as to what you are worried about on that count?

I disagree with you on your point that the loss of the single market cannot be made up over time. The UK will adapt, inovate and prevail. The single market isn't some magic guarantee of economic success, that should be plainly evident by looking at the economic performace of most members of your single market EUtopia in recent history.

In fact I would bet you now that the UK will not perform much worse over the next five years than the French economy has performed since 2012. Also that unemployment will not reach the levels seen in France today.
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I said that recovery is the wrong word. Nothing will change in the sense that we'll still be buying the same products from the US, Germany and Japan for example, as they are the global brands all over the world and not just the EU. You see, it's not matter of making up loss from the single market as on the whole the U.K. is an import market anyway and the U.K. still has plenty of arms to sell to the Middle East anyway.
 
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