Cake and eat it !

[observer]

Seems we're not the only half of this divorce that wants to cherry pick;   the EU are now demanding access to our fishing grounds in order to allow us to secure a bespoke trade deal.  So perhaps the EU are beginning to show that the interests of their member states, like Spanish fishermen, French farmers, Polish and Rumanian job seekers, Greek and Italian hoteliers and German car workers, do provide us with a bit of leverage after all !     

[Davy51]

I do wonder if the spiteful bounders who are trying to bully May & her team are really in touch with the  27 countries they are supposedly representing. Hopefully , the attitude  of these Eurocrats will open the eyes of the persistent Remainers in Britain. Barnier & his gang really are vile individuals.

[observer]

Also seems that the Brussels Dictatorship wants to pick even more cherries, by getting us to commit to their HR laws, in order to get a bespoke trade deal.  You know, the one's that provide illegal migrant murderers with the right to a family life in the UK, as judged by the ECJ and ECHR.  So the case builds imo for no deal at all, we just need politicians with backbone.     

[Davy51]

Well said Obs.

[Confused52]

I found https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/brexit-biggest-problem-european-commission-intransigence/

quite interesting and it mentions the cherry picking issues so is not totally off-topic

[observer]

Well, love him or hate him, Donald has clearly put the EU on notice, that the days of the EU flooding everyone else's markets with goods, whilst restricting imports from the rest of the world are numbered, and the days of one way traffic are over. Perhaps if we adopted the same attitude, we would be doing a lot better in the so-called negotiates over Brexit.  It's clearly the EU that "want the cake and eat it", by operating a virtual protection racket, in which high regulation and standards, plus tariffs are imposed on imports, whilst they expect to flood the rest of the world with their products.  Well it seems they've finally been found out and clearly the US is no longer prepared to accept a trade imbalance with the EU.  Add to this the European avoidance of financial responsibility for their own defence, and the US insistence that they start to pay their own way, and we can see that the one sided EU project has finally been found out and called out.     

[fugtifino]

USA/EU trade isn't markedly imbalanced, with tariffs around 3% on average:

http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/countries/united-states/index_en.htm

Trump doesn't understand basic economics, he thinks buying stuff gives you a deficit. I'd bet he thinks VAT is a tariff.

[observer]

Just a quick look at this apparent EU publication shows a US deficit with the EU in goods and services.  Which shouldn't be a surprise, as the whole point of the single market is about protection, by tariffs and regulation; otherwise there would be no point being in the single market.   If the single market was such a benign arrangement for non-EU countries, we wouldn't be getting the threats from the EU of paying tariffs when we leave; which would hit the EU harder, as they export more to us than we do to them. The reality is that it's a glorified protection racket,  designed to favour the EU.     

[asperity]

The thing about a trade war using tariffs, it is equivalent to the USA saying "I'm going to punch myself in the face" and in retaliation the EU saying "how very dare you, for that I'm going to punch myself in the face. So there!)