Boris Johnson has prioritized political over economic interests in the first trade agreement signed by the United Kingdom after Brexit. He was determined to launch the new economic relationship with the rest of the world as soon as possible after leaving the EU and has signed an agreement with Australia in which, according to experts, it grants the gold and the Moor, to the point of cause serious damage to national agriculture and livestock. If Brussels had proposed something similar to him, he would have shouted to heaven and said that it was an attack on national sovereignty.
Farmers are climbing the walls at the prospect that Australian beef and lamb will compete unfairly with the national, completely free of quotas and tariffs, and with more lax sanitary and environmental standards, which allow chlorination. chickens and give sixteen types of antibiotics to cattle to facilitate mass production.
London wants it to serve as a model for agreements with the US, Canada, India, New Zealand and Brazil
British ranchers and farmers lobbied for tariffs to be maintained, given the inequality between Australian farms (which raise an average of 40,000 cows) and Australian farms (around 30). But the Government, after an intense internal debate, has decided to eliminate them completely, with the only concession to implement them progressively. Still, the barrage of Australian beef (which has hardly been exported to the UK for forty years, which London has been subject to EU regulations) is going to be huge, with an emphasis on the best cuts of veal and beef. for supermarkets, restaurants and high-end consumers.
It is estimated that the trade agreement with Australia will have a negligible economic impact, 0.02% of GDP by 2035 (about 750 million euros). Last year, the United Kingdom exported goods to the oceanic country worth 4.5 billion euros, and imported them for an amount of around 5.2 billion. But for Johnson that’s the least of it. What matters is the symbolism of entering a new type of commercial relations after Brexit, and opening the doors to agreements with the United States, Canada, India, New Zealand, Brazil and South Africa, and of obtaining the invitation to be part of the Trans-Pacific Association, of which eleven countries are part.
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The signing of the pact with Canberra coincides with a deep decline in exports to the European Union (50% of the total worth about 14,000 million euros a year), due to bureaucracy and controls derived from Brexit, which have complicated and made shipments of previously routine merchandise enormously expensive, to the point that many, many small businesses are not justified in the added hassle and expense. But London is hell-bent on shifting the commercial emphasis to the Commonwealth countries, the former colonies and the Pacific Rim.
The advantages for British consumers are going to be minimal (around ten cents of a euro in the price of a bottle of Australian wine), while the inverse meat sales to the United Kingdom are going to multiply initially by ten (and by much more in the future), with the consequent damage to Scottish, Welsh, English and Northern Irish farmers, already affected by a Brexit to which many of them voted ignorant of its consequences (the same as the fishermen).
“The deal is bad enough in itself,” says Michael Hannan, a specialist in international trade, “and shows the UK’s negotiating inexperience after bureaucrats in Brussels took over the job for forty years. But if it is the model by which Johnson intends to negotiate with other countries, it will be a real disaster. “
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