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A comment on EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone. Parent comment

Re:EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone by reubeniv on Friday February 01, 2019 @12:56PM (#19056508)
Not strictly true again, it's not a FTA but there exists a trade deal in some form and the UK just signed with Australia - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-and-australia-agree-co...
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Re:EU and Japan create world's biggest free trade zone by isostatic on Friday February 01, 2019 @01:06PM (#19056650)
That's not really a trade deal (well it's not listed on the page with the free trade agreements the UK has [0], nor on the list of preferential trade deals the UK has [1])

While the spin is "we're doing business", all this does is

"continue to benefit from existing arrangements for mutual recognition"

Given that those benefits are so insignificant they don't appear as free trade agreements says it all really. It's to do with certification (not tarrifs) in a few areas (Automotive Products, Pressure Equipment, Medical Devices etc)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_free_trade_agre...

[1] https://fullfact.org/europe/how-many-free-trade-deals-has-eu...

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