Brexit and “Rip the Band-Aid Off”: Asian Age

The clock is ticking on the Brexit transition. Negotiations continue even as public attention distracted by the Covid-19 pandemic. With a wide gap in expectations from the EU and the UK, negotiations have made little progress on contentious issues including EU access to UK fishing grounds, UK adherence to EU regulations, and agreements on becoming carbon neutral by 2050. “The UK now wants what it says is no more than what the EU agreed with Canada and if that can't be struck, then it is happy to have an ‘Australian-style’ trading arrangement with the EU,” writes Latika Bourke for Asian Age. Australia does not have a free trade agreement with the European Union, “so Britain's acceptance of these arrangements is to essentially embrace No Deal – crashing out of the EU with no agreement and defaulting to the rules set out at the World Trade Organisation for how goods can be traded where no bilateral or multilateral deals exist.” No deal results in economic pain for both the EU and the UK, Bourke notes, but the pandemic will serve as scapegoat. US-UK negotiations for a trade agreement are also underway. – YaleGlobal