The US won't "not accept the deal" or "not make a trade deal with the UK" because UK trades with Iran, itt'l be too good for them to pass up. Itt'l be the only thing going that the UK can accept, no matter how bad it is, in an attempt to save face as they can't be seen to go back to trading with the EU especially on worse terms. This is devolving into a Brexit rant, but I can guarantee you that the US doesnt give two shits if the UK trades with Iran, they're rubbing their hands in anticipation of what is to come. UK knows this so is scrambling to do deals with whoever it can as soon as possible. This is my line of thinking anyway.

I’m surprised their isn’t more discussion about the German domination of the EU. The current structure is not sustainable, and Britain leaving will make that more evident quickly. I would not be surprised if the Dutch are waiting to see where Britain leeds before jumping ship themselves.

Services, maybe - but again most of the core banking will move away from the UK post Brexit and even then there's a lot of overlap in competencies between the UK and USA. There's a lot of smart people in the UK for sure, but there's a lot of smart people in the US.

I can't help but think the whole idea of a US/UK trade alliance is borne more of anglophone ideology than any kind of practicalities.

Don't really see it as an opportunity to save face myself. More an opportunity for those who were the driving force behind Brexit (who entirely coincidentally have significant offshore business interests) to create UK buying opportunities. Opportunities that will arise as our livestock farmers compete against terrible US welfare standards. Despite UK population having shown for decades they want better welfare than even EU standards.

We'd probably lose CE or BSI marks, environmental protections, EU regional food protections, and the price and generic restrictions within the NHS most likely. I'm not sure even the Tories would dare open us up to US healthcare companies, yet. They'll move as far as they think they can get away with.

Then there'll be all the industries that will benefit from harmonisation of UK and US regulatory differences. ie, The US majors will benefit from the GB garage sale of newly failing businesses as Theresa May's fine negotiating team ask for nothing in return except a paper hat.

Edit: ps, Bentley are Volkswagen owned.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44802666

Interestingly, the UK exports rather a lot more to the US than it imports from there.

Edit: What is worrying is that investment in UK car building has drammetically reduced

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/uk-car-manufactu...

Well I never ... I wouldn't have thought that would be something the US would need to import ...

> works of art

Doesn't this refer to a lot of the branding work done by the likes of Starbucks, Amazon etc. which then get written off against tax or something (hence value is quite inflated).

Of course, it might be UK brands licensing their IP?

  Bentley -> Volkswagen
  Rolls Royce, Mini -> BMW
  Aston Martin -> Seems to be independent again
  McLaren -> Half the company is owned by Bahrain
  Lotus -> Geely (China)
  Jaguar/Land Rover -> Tata (India)

Distance really isn't much of an issue at scale, when your cheap stuff comes from China - - edit - to clarify, the point i'm trying to make is that it really doesn't cost much to ship stuff halfway around the world, especially en masse. -, or meat from New Zealand, this isn't much of an argument. This would be a purely US beneficial deal, the UK wouldn't really be bringing anything into the US, other than maybe finance services, specialist products or (i guess) softer products like educational visas?

There's quite a big controversy over here at the moment about the possibility of a US trade deal. We are being told that for it to happen we would have to accept terms like chlorinated chicken/steroid injected beef, and then agree to other things like labeling the origin of the product (so you would never really know if you were eating US or UK products). There's a whole other host of subtleties which would degrade the UK whilst being beneficial to the US, just do a bit of googling about the proposed deals.

Yeah except neither party to this deal is producing "cheap stuff". Both consider themselves to be very much "top tier".

> edit - to clarify, the point i'm trying to make is that it really doesn't cost much to ship stuff halfway around the world, especially en masse

Yeah, if the stuff is "cheap". Like dramatically cheaper than what you can produce at home.

Unfortunately for Brexiteers who use this as an argument for No-Deal Brexit being an opportunity, however, geography was a big consideration for how pretty much every company in the world has set up its supply chains and partners.

"The geography is a bit of an issue for physical goods" when you're not producing goods cheap enough to cover the cost of transit. The UK does not produce cheap goods. Quite the opposite.

I don't think racing to the bottom in living standards to compete productively with China is something that people voting for Brexit had in mind.

The main issue people are concerned about is that the UK would be flooded with cheaper/sub standard goods (re. chlorinated chicken) that they can't differentiate between standard UK/EU products which are of a higher quality. Currently, US meat is outright banned in the EU, if there's an influx in cheap/chemically altered meats coming from the US which people can't differentiate from (this is partially due to the terms of the trading deal banning branding of goods as "Produced in the UK") then people are worried they'd accidentally end up buying them.

Not such a concern about where you’re going to get the £££ if all you’re buying is cheap junk in $$$ but even so there’s got to be cheaper places to buy cheap junk from and sure with the rules lifted why not just start producing cheap junk yourself!

Such things would be clearly labelled and no worse than the US standard. If consumers want it, they will buy it. If they don't, they won't.

Despite the best efforts of whoever to run the country down the UK is and will remain a rich, advanced country, a world leader in many areas, still blessed with ample natural resources, one of the world's most attractive countries for inward investment, a significant tourist destination, and with a population that loves to spend its money making it an attractive marketplace. None of these things are going to change just because France has got it's knickers in a twist about no longer being able to bleed the UK dry to fund the stupid common agricultural policy.

Do you mean "it'll"?

Nobody with half a grasp of reality doubts that Iran was fulfilling its end of the nuclear deal. It’s entirely unclear why China, or North K, or really anybody should trust the US Government in the future. That means one of the arguably most important tools to avoid armed conflict was entirely eliminated from the US arsenal. What makes it even worse is that there just wasn’t any reason to do so, beyond some egotistical jingoism. Saudi Arabia is far worse in almost any observable category.

There is no "real" compliance beyond technical compliance. That's just wordplay.

The problem is that the Iran deal is an Obama deal, so it must be wrong, and Iran's compliance is irrelevant.

Anyone care to justify?

Edit: Or just downvote me instead.

This means Britain will actually have one trade agreement by the time it leaves the EU.

"This is a great example of how current US foreign policy means a loss of soft power all over the world"

Agreed, it does seem very short sighted. Once a system is in place, and it works, suddenly its very easy to apply that system to any other regime where the US doesn't agree with the rest of the world. Plus what's the point in 'rogue' states coming in from the cold, if the US are going to renage on their agreements.

Glass half full, and all that.

One of the big campaigns for Leave was that the EU was dampening our ability to trade with the rest of the World. I guess maybe not then?

The Scottish Independence referendum had a plan running to hundreds of pages. Good bits and bad bits, but a good few people had put thought into what came next.

Leave had a bus, with a slogan.

Not just any slogan, a slogan that was blatantly misleading to say the least.

sadly visible all over the world

You can argue that external forces decrease the room for maneuvers for a single nation. Just as you can argue that member states have the tendency to fiercely guard sovereignty anyway and did so in the past. Nothing to say against that.

But to say that sovereignty is not an important issue to discuss within the European Union isn't an informed position at all.

Most new laws are enacted by the EU in most member states.

> Of course that is one of the most important discussion within the European Union.

Is it? Why?

> Nothing to say against that.

Why should the sovereignty of the UK be paramount? Why not the sovereignty of (for example) London, Cornwall or Scotland?

The UK is a mix of geographically-close former countries, inhabited by people with different backgrounds who speak different native languages and used to be at war with each other.

I fail to see why the UK should have any greater claim to sovereignty than the EU or a subsection of the UK...

> Most new laws are enacted by the EU in most member states.

No idea if that's true, but I do know that the vast majority of laws enacted by the EU are done so because it is more beneficial for the UK (and other member states) if the EU enacts them as opposed to each EU state enacting their own version. Much simpler when it comes to trade etc.

this is not a fact at all, Lisbon removed the veto from nearly every area, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_E...

To argue otherwise would be akin to arguing that the UK parliament isn't sovereign because local councils can make some local decisions independently.

EDIT (To reply to the comment below):

If you read the information in the link posted, it's obvious that the important decisions still require unanimity, even if minor decisions (yes, some of them in important fields) now only require QMV.

FWIW, I'm a fan of QMV.

personally I would call employment, business, immigration, social security, criminal law, and half a dozen things listed there as important, but there you go

> If you read the information in the link posted, it's obvious that the important decisions still require unanimity, even if minor decisions (yes, some of them in important fields) now only require QMV.

not true (again)... might be true most of the time, but not always (which is the entire problem)

see the fuss over the past two years where eastern european countries were forced over their explicit objections to accept migrant quotas using QMV

Luckily, neither is likely to happen and - even if it were proposed - the UK has the power to veto it ever happening.

assuming we are in the EU. if we're outside, we just watch and weep.

You may be right, but it's not right

So I think you need some enforcement of standards, whether moral or legal.