The Brexit Retreat

Good grief. What happened to you to make you feel like that?

Nah, he definitely lied about the reasons for going to war.

It was all about oil and the petrodollar.

We can. Interesting comments on here from the pro Brexit side. I think some of the comments underline what many of us "internationalits" fear. That not an insignificant number use this debate as an outlet (cover) for their racist and xenophobic views.it seems to me if you challenge Brexiteers on detail they fall over and offer nothing but "Mom, Pop and Apple Pie" responses. Frightening.

Very good critique here of EU Japan trade deal. It does not go far enough. With regard to some comments on here about Japan, interesting comment about their PM using deals like this to prise open their sclerotic society to internationalism.
At the very time that Brexiteers are intent on reversing the "Open Economy" that the UK has developed and enjoyed over the last 20 years.

www.ft.com/content/3c44a364-85fd-11e8-a29d-73e3d454535d

These are dark days for the global trading system. Donald Trump seems intent on testing to destruction its resilience to protectionism and unilateralism. China, although it makes noises about being part of an alliance to restrain or outflank the US president, forges ahead with its own nationalist development strategy. Like Mr Trump, Beijing wrongly seems to regard the world economy as a zero-sum game.

It is some cause for cheer, then, that on Tuesday the world’s second- and fourth-largest trading blocs, the EU and Japan, held the official signing ceremony for a bilateral trade deal that was agreed in principle last year after four years of relatively straightforward talks with little public opposition.

Yet the agreement, while welcome, falls short of an adequate response to the threats to global commerce. This is not just because it does not include the US and China. It is because the EU in particular has prioritised speed over quality in its rush to rack up bilateral trade deals around the globe.

Much credit for the agreement, and for his approach to trade policy more generally, should go to Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister. Beyond driving forward this bilateral deal with the EU, he was instrumental in reviving the Trans-Pacific Partnership after Mr Trump pulled the US out of it. Shorn of the more restrictive provisions on intellectual property rights, the pointedly renamed Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership also became a better deal.

Japan has traditionally played a somewhat subdued role in multilateral or plurilateral trade negotiations, usually letting others take the lead. But Mr Abe has seized the opportunity to use trade deals exactly the way they are supposed to function, as a way of forcing domestic reform. He has employed agreements to try to crack open Japan’s heavily protected and stultified agricultural sector, and to promote domestic services liberalisation.

A similar strategy, unfortunately, is less evident on the European side. The omission in the Japan deal, and one of the most important holes in the EU’s trade strategy, is the absence of a substantive binding reciprocal agreement on the free flow of data.

The global move to data localisation — requiring that information be held in-country — is a clear and present danger to global integration. It threatens not just the delivery of online services but the data components now embedded in so many manufactures, such as maintenance contracts for vehicles, that are increasingly more valuable than the physical goods themselves. But the EU is terrified of public suspicion that data agreements mean compromising personal privacy. Accordingly, it declines to put meaningful data flow provisions into trade deals.

Instead, Brussels and Tokyo are reduced to pretending that they have a binding reciprocal agreement by simultaneously signing “adequacy agreements” recognising each other’s data privacy regime as sufficient to permit the transfer of personal information. Such deals are vulnerable to domestic court challenge — as was the EU’s “Safe Harbor” agreement with the US — and can unilaterally be revoked. Adequacy is an unacceptably fragile form of governance for such an important feature of modern economies.

With this deal done, the EU and Japan should take the opportunity to broaden out their approach to trade diplomacy, trying to mobilise other large economies to defend and extend free trade. The agreement is welcome, as far as it goes. But its coverage both in terms of breadth and depth means it can only be a partial response to the threats to global free trade.

Full transcript for those who cannot access the FT

Trump praised Boris.

That should tell you all you need to know.

I'm no Trump fan but he does seem damned if he does and damned if he doesn't on everything. Any praise or goodwill towards Putin and Kim he gets stick, he would also get stick for making negative comments and trying to stoke WWIII and saying nothing he would be accused of burying his head in the sand.
He should go back to counting his money and building great golf courses which he is good at.

I think consistency is the main charge, plus an almost psychotic inability to listen and take advice from those who know more than he does.
As such, he consistently makes a fool of himself. Bit like Boris and Reese-Mogg

Knife crime and the moped robbing gangs in London have nothing to do with Brexit or our membership of the EU.Immigration may have played a part in some folks thinking especially the people living in the north of England where the leave vote was very high.I don't think anyone can argue against EU citizens coming to the UK to work bringing much needed skills with them that are required and that shouldn't stop.A free for all where EU citizens can come to the UK claim benefits and live off the state receiving free healthcare is not what is desired and using the r word and putting phobia on the end of words with no meaning will not stop people feeling that way.