They would be front of queue

It was widely reported that President Obama said that if we left the EU the USA would put the UK at the back of the queue when it came to negotiating a trade deal.
By The Newsroom
Published 15th May 2016, 07:33 BST

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What wasn’t made so clear was that the USA-EU TTIP deal that he was referring to doesn’t actually exist yet so we wouldn’t actually be missing out on anything if we were to Brexit.

We currently do billions of trade with the USA without TTIP and this would continue if we were to leave the EU.

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TTIP is a free trade deal that the USA and EU have been negotiating without success since 2013.

We don’t currently have a free trade deal with the USA and given that the French president cannot accept the deal in its current form it is questionable whether the deal will ever come to fruition.

Getting 28 countries to agree on something is never easy so if we want a free trade deal with the USA it would be faster if we negotiated alone and the outcome would be more in our favour as we wouldn’t have to compromise with 28 other countries.

But some would argue whether a free trade deal is actually beneficial to us.

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Trade tariffs for most products are currently very low (<3 per cent) so consumers will not see price reductions.

The free trade agreement will focus on standards and regulatory issues to remove barriers to trade.

This will open up new areas of competition and privatisation, possibly opening up the NHS to America- style healthcare.

Australia has a free trade agreement with the USA and it seems to have boosted USA exports to Australia but not helped the Australians export to the USA.

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That is why President Obama did a European tour and spoke out in our referendum debate.

The USA stands to benefit from an EU-USA trade deal far more than you do.

If we Brexit the wheels will probably come off the whole TTIP project.

Rest assured, the UK is the fifth largest economy in the world and American companies want to be at the front of the queue for a piece of the action, not at the back of the queue.

Steve Spice

Udimore Road

Broad Oak

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Related topics:USANHSAustraliaBrexit