EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone

Apparently that's the high end, the low end being "process American product slices". Not even allowed to use the word "cheese" in a name.

There's a reason why people say "the best thing since sliced bread". Sliced cheese has similar structural advantages. What is convenient becomes popular - for better or worse.

Isn't that probably a French tradition in Quebec, considering it's a French speaking province?

I'm not sure about your definition of often. I have not seen a Japanese eating cheese or even stopping at the small cheese collection in my local supermarket in the last four months I've been here.

I think price above value is a somewhat good indicator how commonly used a product actually is. The Camembert you linked also costs between ¥400 and ¥600 in my local supermarket. That's a 5-8 times price increase to Camembert of the same or I think even larger size in German supermarkets. The price imho indicates this is a exotic rarely used speciality.

Milk and Jogurth on the other hand have only a smaller 30-50% price increase to German supermarkets for the same quantity and quality. I also see Japanese frequently buying these.

Interesting. Have been in Italy a bunch of times as it's fairly close from Bavaria, but didn't know that!

you forgot the fact that it's coagulated using the insides of a calf's stomach!

(although depending on cheese, animal rennet may not be used)

Sushi rolls are not traditionally Japanese. You will typically see sashimi, not sushi rolls, in Japan. The type of sushi Americans eat is not at all like what is eaten in Japan, and is frankly pretty terrible in comparison.

And you will never, ever, see cream cheese on sushi in Japan.

Maybe, but that involves burning a lot of resources in a sort of crazy hope that nobody is going to try and compete when you start making money again.

Africa is an interesting case in point - I don't know very much about the average case, but I remember Zimbabwe gutted themselves, going from the Bread Basket of Africa to famine in a very short period of time with no particular effort from outside forces. There is a strong case the Africa's economic problems are more attributable to their struggles to organise politically rather than charity and dumping from external economies (which probably hasn't helped or hindered in the big picture). Maybe we can peg the organisational issues on foreign countries; but it is going to be more complicated than that.

Take China. Their protectionist policies probably have an impact, but most of their advantage is they are organised, politically stable, willing to work more for less pay and have a culture that believes in investment and education. Without government handicaps like Maoist Communism, that is a very formidable set of attributes in a competitor.

Sure, except that reviving the competition costs money in its own right many times - it's usually not a Bitcoin miner that can be turned off when it's unprofitable and turned on again with the flick of a switch when it becomes profitable to run.

So your price ends up at fair market price... when averaged over many decades, maybe, but likely not for long at any particular point in time. And in the meantime workers get screwed over as industries and skillsets lose economic value.

There are more things than price that can prevent competition from reappearing once it became extinguished.

If there is a constant threat of the prices being lowered again, it will be pointless to reinvest in restarting competition - the monopolist at any time can lower the prices back down.

Also, in some fields the monopolistic position gives network effects to the producer that cannot be replicated by an upstart, making a competition unlikely.

> why do the interests of one particular interest group weigh in larger than the well-being of everyone else?

then, if I interpret this correctly, Friedman's idea truly was that laid-off steelworkers "take one for the team"

right. more examples of the same. economic gains are unevenly distributed and some workers experience a deep net loss.

so, what regulatory or governmental policies and programs did Friedman think could actually help people once they arrive in that state? what can an economist say about policy for workers whose livelihood disappeared?

Sorry, nobody is denying the benefits of free trade and specialisation, come on. However, there are people that suffer from the changes, and contrary to the ideal world of econ 101, they're not immediately redeployed in a more productive sector etc.

Now the remarkable thing about free trade/specialisation is that we can help those people and still be better off overall. And I'm arguing that in some case we should actually do that.

I'm really not sure what's so complicated about the argument: Economic analysis shows that with free trade a country as a whole can afford more than without (which is insufficient to state that everyone is better off, thus insufficient to state that the country is better off), and using the device of redistribution/compensation you can show that everyone in that country can be made better off.

Comparative advantage shows that production in either countries is improved, increasing supply and therefore putting pressure on prices, increasing the purchasing power. This simply isn't redistribution of income.

An individual worker, whose livelihood is destroyed and who is unable to perform any other form of work (unlikely, but conceivable) will of course have less than before. I don't see anybody making the argument that every single individual will be better off (that's obviously wrong), but the purchasing power of every individual income will increase.

You can make an argument that such inequalities should be mitigated by some income-redistributing measure or another, but that's orthogonal to comparative advantage itself.

Redistribution is required for Pareto efficiency (improvement without making any individual worse off). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency

Free trade allows exchanges that make both involved parties better off, but possibly harms others (higher cost producers). This can be done without redistribution.

It is interesting that you suggest that existing producers deserve compensation. Why? Do they have some innate right to their previous business model or profession?

Sugar producers in the US have been protected for decades by trade policy that increases the costs for all sugar consumers in the US. I don't know that they deserve that protection but it would be cheaper to just compensate them at a decreasing rate to get them out of the business, rather than perpetually enforcing higher sugar prices.

Oops, make that centuries - the US sugar industry developed in part because of tariffs https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1/25... page 18 "Ballinger (1975) asserts that when the United States acquired the Louisiana Territory in 1803, the fledgling sugar industry there immediately benefited from tariff protection, hence spurring its development." Do they still deserve compensation if harmed by free trade? They've already been compensated by unfree trade...

arr. strait over my head.

As I mentioned in my sister comment, because we have evidence that allowing companies to do this would've resulted in the tobacco lobby being able to overturn public health laws in Australia (because they tried to do it within an arbitration courts that they didn't have jurisdiction in). If the TPP was signed in 2011, Australia would've had to pay damages to Phillip Morris for passing plain packaging laws (something that is now becoming a more common law in many jurisdictions).

The problem with the EFTA (or ECJ) comparison is that those courts are designed to deal with the laws and directives passed by the EU/EEA. The entire point of the EU/EEA is that members democratically vote on laws that will affect members -- thus a violation of said laws by a government is similar (in principle) to any other violation by a government where an individual can sue the government for violating a law.

The TPP arbitration process is not like this at all. There is no democratic agreement on common laws that member states must not violate -- it's a process to allow a corporation to sue a government for enacting "discriminatory" laws (unless those laws are "fair and proportionate" -- which obviously is a very wishy-washy constraint).

GMOs, together with massive animal agriculture are a black swan in the making. Let's modify the organisms, create billions of them, have them as a testing ground for bacteria and viruses, let the bacteria and viruses evolve to eventually kill the resistant individuals, then after it happens we need 10 more years until more than a thousand billion individuals produce a human targeting strain.

There is absolutely no scientific way anyone can measure the risk without the effect of time.

Not to mention that my story is only one outcome out of many downsides and it's already happening with antibiotics abuse in animal ag.

The avian flu is a good past example. The disease sparked from a population of animals we raise the most. Hundreds of billions of chickens were Petri dishes for the ultimate strain of mammal killers. Intuitively these kinds of situations are inevitable.

And more people in the US voted for Clinton than Trump, yet here we are.

That the narrow result of a single vote is seen as sufficient justification to wildly swing a government's policy in a new direction with huge effects over decades is... baffling to me. Watching it happen is like seeing something announced by someone pretending to be a US President in a Saturday Night Live sketch and then, the next day, everyone treating it like a real thing that had happened and the whole state's policy shifting to reflect those statements, and no-one acting like that's extremely weird and insane.

We're not talking about law; we're talking about hearts and minds, identity, nationalism, the stuff that causes wars and keeps peace.

The agreement contains a commitment by the British and Irish governments to develop "close cooperation between their countries as friendly neighbours and as partners in the European Union".

It's hard to see how we can do that as, er, not members of the European Union. I believe the Common Travel Area is also a key issue as it commits us to open travel through the border which on the face of it seems incompatible with leaving the customs union.

The problem is the Brexit camp won't actually say exactly what they want, or exactly what their solutions to these problems are. They don't want to be in the customs union, by and large because it would restrict our ability to do trade deals outside the EU, but they won't say how specifically they would manage cross-border travel and checks which changes incompatible with the customs union might require. Until we find out what those deals outside the EU actually are, we can't say specifically what impact they might or might not have on the transport of goods and people.

The Brexit camp want to cast this whole situation as the EU and Irish Republic forcing us to do this or that. They aren't. We freely and willingly went into all these commitments, many of which we were the driving force behind initiating and we're the ones threatening to tear them all up and force changes on them.

The brexit camp are full of red lines for what they don't want, but have yet to present any credible plan clearly specifying what they actually do want, what it's consequences would be and how to implement it.

I'm not a lawyer, so not 100% but

Article 1 part iii:

"and that it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people;"

A majority of NI didn't vote for Brexit, and a hard border would change the status of NI?

You need to distinguish freedom of movement (people) and a customs agreement (goods).

Sweden and Norway are both Schengen members, so they have explicitly agreed on freedom of movement for people. That does not say anything about goods.

But I don't know why such an arrangement could not work with the UK (both the UK and Norway are members of the European Economic Area) – presumably because the UK wants to leave that as well, because they want to go it alone and not align their trade policies with the European partners?

Norway is in the EEA.

Norway basically applies all EU laws without being able to vote on them.

Fine by me, if the UK wants that. Oh, and by the way, Norway declared it doesn't want the UK in the EEA: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/norweg...

Norway Sweden broder is not open for goods, same as Switzerland-EU border.

That type of border would be a disaster in Ireland.

It's not

Freedom of movement of people between Ireland and the UK is covered by the CTA. That won't change come March 31st.

Freedom of goods, services, and capital however would. The Norway Sweden border does not allow freedom of movement of goods. That's a major problem in Ireland, as you can't inspect goods passing between the north and the rest like you can between Norway and Sweden.

So why bother with a border at all?

The WTO say you have to secure your border to be a member. Imagine the UK charging high tarrifs on imports of Japanese cars. That's fine, Japan charges tarrifs on UK microwaves (or whatever).

So the UK simply moves its goods over the border to Ireland and sells them using the EU tarrifs. Japan gets pissed, and the WTO interceeds.

A cheese factory in Newry buys milk from a farm in Castleblayney (who's cows roam both sides of the border) and a farm Middletown. It then sells its cheese to a pie factory in Dundalk and a wholesaler in Omagh. The former make cheese and onion pies (onions from Coleraine), and sells them to shops in Belfast and Dublin, the latter simply packages them up and ships them to supermarkets in Galway and Lisburn.

That's a nightmare when there's a customs border between the north and south, even if it's a magical invisible one.

Well, if the UK side believes that the EU cannot be trusted, then there shouldn't be a deal at all.

Because there are always small details cropping up later that need to be fixed "fairly".

Unfortunately that fits very well within the "go whistle" stance, and that's why I don't really support any Brexit deal and think the UK should just crash out, consequences be damned.

If May had won a decent majority in the election, I think she would have gotten the backstop through, possibly even NI-only.

The all-UK backstop is an EU concession to the UK. The UK fought and asked for it, and other parties - e.g. France - are not in favour of it. It is not a plot to control the UK.

For example, it only binds the UK mainland to follow harmonized laws in effect at the beginning of the backstop, and not to track dynamic changes to the regulatory landscape. Lack of dynamic tracking means UK has a built-in and potentially growing advantage over the rest of the EU, should it ever remain in effect for long.

In any case, it's strongly in the UK's interest to have more integration than the backstop - to actually track closer to EU regulation than the backstop enforces - because the EU will continue to be the UK's single most significant economic partner, and the closest regulatory superpower. The UK doesn't have enough weight to get global suppliers to make special products for its domestic market if the regulations are different.

The EU has no incentive for a pissed off UK hanging on the basis of a temporary compromise.

It’s only the ERG’s inflated sense of England’s greatness that makes it hard for them to comprehend that the EU actually has bigger goals than just attaching itself to the UK.

This misunderstanding has led Brexiters to be consistently wrong in their analyses and predictions throughout this process. Right from easiest deal in history, to having your cake and eating it too, to wondering why doesn’t the Republic of Ireland just subjugate itself to the UK and give up their independence.

The ERG wants an excuse, they have already started indicating other problems if the backstop gets resolved. They can never be satisfied which was why May called the last election.

Are you suggesting that the UK makes the EU trade with it by threatening to nuke it if it doesn't?

Because that's horrifying, and I can't see how else to read your comment.

I'm really not sure what your point is. Clarification?

Nuclear weapons won't do much about car bombs in London or help with EU negotiations unless the UK wants to re-enact a more rainy Mad Max after leaving.

If a hard border returns to Northern Ireland, as it might, all it could take is one border incident to kick things off again.

This contract matters, as does keeping free movement on the island. For everyone in Ireland, north and south, and many in Britain too.

Because then no country trusts or will do deals with you again. Let's see Britain is struggling to get trading partners, so let's show ourselves unworthy to be trading partners. That doesn't help.

The UK has the theoretical capacity to renege on the Withdrawal Agreement after signing it and declare that Northern Ireland is leaving the Single Market permanently regardless of whether the EU and Ireland still have reasonable objections to the alternative border arrangements.

But intentionally breaching an international agreement probably isn't the best way of starting a brave new era of signing new international trade agreements, even before the likely resulting strife in NI is considered.

It makes no sense to put it anywhere.

Because you can't put a new border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Just because it does more trade with England doesn't mean anything, that's because England is bigger. What's more important is that you can't put a border or wall or customs check really between NI and Ireland.

The thrust of the GFA is that changes to the constitutional status of NI and other devolved decisions should be agreed between representatives of the respective unionist and republican communities (or in the case of NI choosing to leave the UK, by referendum). A customs border down the Irish Sea might not pose as many practical problems as a land border but is a pretty dramatic change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland which unionists who consider NI to be an integral part of the UK naturally oppose. (the DUP don't talk up the GFA angle, not least because they actually originally opposed the GFA and aren't exactly upholding the spirit of it themselves, but there's a legitimate argument that the spirit of the agreement was also intended to protect unionists from having major constitutional changes imposed upon them without their consent or a public vote)

I remember all the FUD pre-referendum about how their would be an immediate economic crash the day after a vote to leave the EU. Look how well that prediction turned out.