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Comment by ajb | Hacker News Reader

There are two parts to the fishing thing. From a pure economic perspective, fishing is insignificant. But within living memory obtaining food was a national security issue for the UK (during world war II). In a world in which states look not to grow their economy, but to harm others - and guess what, that's where we just arrived - not all industries can be considered purely on their revenue. Man cannot live on warhammer alone.

We need to distinguish between paying over the odds to keep industries which are essential to have in an antagonistic scenario, from loss-aversion and nostalgia for industries which don't provide as much employment as they used to.

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A precision injection moulding factory can (I assume) relatively quickly start producing other plastic parts for military use.

Post-Brexit, there's now increased incentive for Games Workshop to build their next factory in the EU.

(Games Workshop is one company, but this applies to every manufacturing company in the UK.)

Fair. I'm not a fan of Brexit and I think it's been both driven and implemented more listening to nostalgia than strategy.

Brexit is mad, driven by nostalgia etc.

However, if we got a free trade agreement with the US would the inverse be true, EU companies are better off moving to the UK due to brexit? What about just a FTA with all commonwealth countries (why haven't we done this??)?

Trump is unpredictable. He made a new free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico in his previous term, but has put tariffs on some Canadian goods this time round. That isn't going to reassure investors.

A FTA with the USA would come at a significant price — the UK would be pressured to accept low-quality American agricultural produce, and lower many other standards from their current European level. If it does this, that reduces the global value of British exports.

Hard to say that's the exact compromise he'd want, as you say he's unpredictable.

there was much ado about chlorinated chicken a few days ago. apparently the US washes chicken carcasses with chlorine to disinfect them, whereas that's illegal in the EU, which has more stringent farm cleanliness standards instead. I think there's similar issues with an arsenic compound (seriously!) being fed to chicken as some sort of antibiotic.

iirc Trump did say he wanted EU to accept our livestock to reduce the trade deficit, leading Lutnick to memorably proclaim "They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak!"

"Chlorinated chicken" has been a discussion topic in Britain since before Brexit, when some politicians were saying it would be easy to get a deal with the USA to replace trade with the EU.

It's not something that will be forgotten easily. British people on all sides were against reducing food standards.

IMO I think we'll end up with "a uk body setting new GMO standards" being cover to allow US GMO stuff in. Then maybe hormone beef and similar, but not chicken. Quota-less fish, tariff free trucks/cars (like that's going to make a difference) and some other minor tweaks.

Why does everyone assume the commonwealth wants and FTA with us?

Because free trade is typically a good thing that lifts everyone? It's also not "FTA with the UK" it's FTA between everyone, we just happen to be a member. We may be quite low down the list for say Canada as a trading partner and that's fine?

No. Because there wasn't any significant trade barriers to the EU from the US up till last week.

And then today all the tarrifs are suspended (down to 10%) so it's hardly like there's a reliable advantage there.

Yes, and we'll see what next week brings sigh. For all any of us know we're going to wake up in the morning and the EU has a 125% tariff too. I'm not even sure Mr orange himself knows what happens in 90 days when these temporary reliefs expire.

90 days? We don't know what is going to happen tomorrow or more to the point if you put goods on a boat to the USA you have no way to predict what the tariff will be when they arrive. If you are selling a product that relies on imported parts you can not know your cost of goods until they clear customs.

We are literally in the process of moving some of our operations to LATM to avoid this uncertainty.

How can anybody trust the US ever again? Trump completely ignored an existing free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico that he himself signed.

You have to assume that the US is sane a maximum of four years in a row and in four years another Trump 2.0 will again be completely ignoring all their agreements.

In my opinion, the US cannot be trusted with any treaties ever again the way they currently are.

If you can make the mold.

How much of a fish industry will remain when the North Sea is a battleground?

Is there any fishing going on in the Black Sea at the moment? (genuine question)

> Is there any fishing going on in the Black Sea at the moment? (genuine question)

yes, while fishing vessels fairly rarely broadcast AIS, there's plenty of turkish, bulgarian, and even three russian fishing vessels broadcasting AIS in the black sea right now. No ukrainian vessels that I can see, but again, AIS is fairly rare for fishing boats anyway.

Of course. There are three NATO nations and Georgia on the Black Sea, and there is no war in their waters. The Black Sea is not very productive fish-wise, but this is another topic.

>Is there any fishing going on in the Black Sea

Yes, but not a lot since the fish is very scarce and it supplies a small part of the local consumption. Romanian vessels used to fish in oceans. I presume Russian vessels, too.

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