Two for the price of one trade wars!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Seems BoJo machinations in Northern Ireland have ended up with threats from both the United States and the EU:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/p...ntl/index.html

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, has warned that Britain will be unable to secure a trade deal with the US if it does anything to undermine the treaty that brought peace to Northern Ireland after decades of violence.
"If the UK violates that international treaty and Brexit undermines the Good Friday accord, there will be absolutely no chance of a US-UK trade agreement passing the Congress," Pelosi said in a statement on Wednesday.
Her comments come in the same week that the UK proposed legislation that would, in the words of a UK cabinet minister, "break international law in a very specific and limited way."

The British government on Wednesday published the Internal Market Bill, which it claims is designed to ensure that in the event of a no-deal Brexit, trade between the four nations of the United Kingdom would remain unfettered.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics...brexit-treaty/

Brussels will start a trade war with Britain if the UK presses ahead with plans to renege on the Withdrawal Agreement and ignores other sanctions possible under the Brexit divorce treaty, according to internal EU documents.

The bloc is also considering legal action against the UK, which could lead to large fines levied by the European Court of Justice, before the Internal Markets Bill is passed by parliament. That would heap pressure on MPs to rebel against Boris Johnson.

The EU is also prepared to use the dispute settlement process in the Withdrawal Agreement, which could result in further fines and binding rulings, a paper circulated among the bloc’s 27 capitals said.

If those sanctions fail to force Britain to cave, the EU will suspend any free trade deal or other agreements it may have with the UK, which could involve the imposition of tariffs and quotas.

“In case of non-payment or persisting non-compliance, the complaining party is entitled to suspend its obligations arising from the Withdrawal Agreement (with the significant exception of the provisions relating to citizens) or from the future EU/UK agreement," the paper said.

However, the Government is attempting to push through the legislation at speed, with the Bill expected to clear its first two hurdles in the Commons within a fortnight.

The move is likely to mean that the Bill will pass into law before any EU legal proceedings are completed.

The Telegraph understands that the sectors most likely to be targeted by the EU are agriculture and car parts. The City of London would also be likely to lose its access to the EU’s Single Market as part of a raft of sanctions levied against the UK.

“The union will take all appropriate measures to ensure the full implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement,” the document said.

I got to say its impressive to get both the US and EU annoyed with us at the same time,over the SAME thing.

[kalniel]

Well at least Russia and China are happy that we're joining in the lack of respect for international law.

[Saracen999]

Seems BoJo machinations in Northern Ireland have ended up with threats from both the United States and the EU:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/p...ntl/index.html



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics...brexit-treaty/



I got to say its impressive to get both the US and EU annoyed with us at the same time,over the SAME thing.

Not really. The EU stance is utterly predictable and the "US" stance is, so far, more of a Pelosi stance. The latter, of course, might have greater relevance under a Biden presidency.

Either way, both EU and US are looking out for EU and US respectively, not for the UK. And currently, we don't have a trade deal with the US, and one with the EU looking increasingly unlikely but in the event of the latter, this bill is moot anyway.

[adidan]

I don't think a Government saying it is willing to break International Law is ever moot.

It's dishonourable and makes us untrustworthy.

[Saracen999]

I don't think a Government saying it is willing to break International Law is ever moot.

It's dishonourable and makes us untrustworthy.

Missing the point, and not what I said.

Those provisions don't apply if there is an EU trade deal. So the EU threatening to pull it over provisions that don't apply if there is one is moot, because if there isn't one, there's nothing to pull. It is therefore moot.

This comes back to the obnoxious attitude of the EU in trying to get ANY deal that they would agree to, and that would get past those in Westminster furiously trying to block Brexit from happening at all. It all flows from that. Remember May saying no British PM could agree a deal that put a border down the North Sea? Yet the EU did everything possible to force exactly that, hence the Withdrawal Agreement.

That's exactly why we should have just left on a no deal basis and no withdrawal deal. What we ended up with was deferring the pain then, for pain now.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Not really. The EU stance is utterly predictable and the "US" stance is, so far, more of a Pelosi stance. The latter, of course, might have greater relevance under a Biden presidency.

Either way, both EU and US are looking out for EU and US respectively, not for the UK. And currently, we don't have a trade deal with the US, and one with the EU looking increasingly unlikely but in the event of the latter, this bill is moot anyway.

Not really. Both the Senate and House of Represenatives need to pass a trade deal. This is what happened with USMCA:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/10/hous...rade-deal.html

The House of Representatives is Democrat,and its the Senate which is Republican. Both need to pass a trade deal. From elsewhere:

Capitol Hill’s Friends of Ireland Caucus, founded in 1981, is currently headed by Massachusetts Democratic Representative Richard Neal, who also chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. Significantly, this committee, which has jurisdiction over tariffs, holds the power to approve or block any future trade agreement between the UK and the US. Among this caucus’s members are prominent Senators including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York), Chris Murphy (Connecticut), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Tim Kaine (Virginia), and Bob Casey (Pennsylvania), along with Representatives Peter T. King of the GOP and Democrat Brendan Boyle who, this year, introduced in Congress a resolution opposing a hard border in Ireland. Under the Clinton administration in the 1990s, organised Irish-America, including sitting members of Congress like King and Neal, played an active role in shaping the Good Friday Agreement and are thus unlikely to welcome a Brexit which risks undermining its provisions.

Its also a stance amongst a number of Republicans too in the Senate:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/u...deal-x2fhrclvq
https://www.irishpost.com/news/irish...ireland-169512

This is the same US which let the IRA quietly fund raise for decades,because there is strong Irish support in the country.

So in the end fight with the US,EU,China and everyone else.

Edit!!

The Japan trade deal has now stalled over cheese:

https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-j...20-8?r=US&IR=T

Australia,hopefully end of year:
https://www.ft.com/content/750b31e2-...3-0753c294e8a9

Canada is also not really budging:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexspence/...-agreement-for
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f...tall-gf85cs2zq

India trade deal has not moved forward since 2016:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/77156759.cms
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-in...-idUKKCN24C0L5


So what have we been doing for 4 years,regarding trade deals with any major nation?? Any EU deal only covered the EU,not the dozens of countries outside it.

I actually thought we would have got some of the others done by now,or at least close to be done.

[TeePee]

Worth noting that Pelosi is a Democrat.

Trump as an individual is pretty universally hated in the UK, for obvious reasons, but don't be fooled by the BBC or CNN. Trump wants to make a 'big beautiful deal' while the Democrats want to put the UK at the back of the line.

This is just posturing from the EU.

[adidan]

Missing the point, and not what I said.

Those provisions don't apply if there is an EU trade deal. So the EU threatening to pull it over provisions that don't apply if there is one is moot, because if there isn't one, there's nothing to pull. It is therefore moot.

This comes back to the obnoxious attitude of the EU in trying to get ANY deal that they would agree to, and that would get past those in Westminster furiously trying to block Brexit from happening at all. It all flows from that. Remember May saying no British PM could agree a deal that put a border down the North Sea? Yet the EU did everything possible to force exactly that, hence the Withdrawal Agreement.

That's exactly why we should have just left on a no deal basis and no withdrawal deal. What we ended up with was deferring the pain then, for pain now.

No I understood your point.

My point is still that merely saying we are willing to break International Law will cause us damage irrespective of whether we do or not.

I'm not sure how it the EU being 'obnoxious' when the WA was backed by BoJo, pushed through the House without scrutiny as it was 'oven ready' but is now somehow not good enough and that is the fault of the EU. Oh and Remainers, of course.

Just go back over the past few years and look at Johnson's comments and claims and people who voted Leave should grow a spine and own this mess.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Worth noting that Pelosi is a Democrat.

Trump as an individual is pretty universally hated in the UK, for obvious reasons, but don't be fooled by the BBC or CNN. Trump wants to make a 'big beautiful deal' while the Democrats want to put the UK at the back of the line.

This is just posturing from the EU.

Also noted that dozens of Republicans in the senate,are part of the Friends of Ireland group,who pretty much said the same last year. Even when the Republicans were in power,had a blind eye for IRA fundraising in the US. Organisations such as NORAID.

Don't think for one moment its all Democrat lead,if that was the case the IRA would have been banned in the 1980s. It took until 2001,for Bush to ban the real IRA,and that was after the Good Friday agreement.

Edit!!

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/n...-35379252.html

The CIA kept silent on explosive allegations that they were involved in gun running to the IRA during the Troubles, declassified intelligence files have revealed.

The concerns were raised in a letter to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from a congressman who warned the organisation to "speak out vehemently", or risk other criminal and terrorist organisations "finding cover under the CIA umbrella".

It followed the 1982 trial of five self-confessed IRA gun smugglers - including Michael Flannery, the 80-year-old founder of Noraid - found not guilty of transporting an arsenal of weapons and ammo into Northern Ireland.

The five claimed they bought the arms from an arms dealer, who was an undercover CIA agent.

The CIA, with a licence to export weapons, had aided their operation in order to monitor the flow of arms to Ireland and prevent the IRA from turning to the Soviet Union for arms, the defence claimed.

It was a defence the jury found credible - with a female juror telling Press they "firmly believed" the operation could not have continued without government sanction.

The letter from Benjamin A Gilman to William J Casey, Director of the CIA, dated November 1982, was contained along with press reports of the trial in a cache of some 13 million pages of documents declassified by the CIA and released on their website.

The move came after lengthy efforts from freedom of information campaigners and a lawsuit against the CIA which culminated in the agency finally releasing the archive.

The CIA were more concerned about the IRA getting Soviet arms,so instead decided to give them weapons. This was during the era of Ronald Reagan.

[Ttaskmaster]

Ah, who flippin' cares?
We ought to break whatever laws we want, because we are going it alone and standing on our own two feet, here. Stuff the idiot children in the US and stuff the filthy Eurobums in Brussels - We're gonna bring back the British steel industry, and British manufacturing, and British Oil and British Coal and British Gas.... and we're gonna Make Britain Great Again.

We're also gonna build a wall around Southern Ireland, and the Irish are gonna pay for it.

[TeePee]

Also noted that dozens of Republicans in the senate,are part of the Friends of Ireland group,who pretty much said the same last year.

There are no Republican Senators in the Friends of Ireland caucus.

Here's a full list of members: http://www.irishnationalcaucus.org/c...ess-2019-2021/

There are no Republican Senators, only a few Republican Congressmen, but not dozens.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There are no Republican Senators in the Friends of Ireland caucus.

Yes you also on purpose ignored this:

Capitol Hill’s Friends of Ireland Caucus, founded in 1981, is currently headed by Massachusetts Democratic Representative Richard Neal, who also chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. Significantly, this committee, which has jurisdiction over tariffs, holds the power to approve or block any future trade agreement between the UK and the US. Among this caucus’s members are prominent Senators including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York), Chris Murphy (Connecticut), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Tim Kaine (Virginia), and Bob Casey (Pennsylvania), along with Representatives Peter T. King of the GOP and Democrat Brendan Boyle who, this year, introduced in Congress a resolution opposing a hard border in Ireland. Under the Clinton administration in the 1990s, organised Irish-America, including sitting members of Congress like King and Neal, played an active role in shaping the Good Friday Agreement and are thus unlikely to welcome a Brexit which risks undermining its provisions.

Ireland complicating Anglo-American cooperation would not be without precedent. A hundred years ago, Irish-America made a noteworthy contribution to the Senate’s non-ratification of the Versailles Treaty which in effect disrupted relations between the UK and US in the post-war years. Frustrated at Woodrow Wilson’s failure to grant a hearing to the nascent Irish Republic at the Paris Peace Conference, hard-line Irish-American leaders like the exiled Fenian John Devoy and New York Supreme Court Justice Daniel F. Cohalan joined the GOP in its campaign against the President and his bid for the League of Nations.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2019/1...les-to-brexit/



Yes,there is because one of them is Pete King who is a Republican and a spokesperson for them. Plus if the Republicans were so not concerned with Ireland,then why wasn't the IRA banned for decades.


Why did the CIA give them weapons during Reagon's presidency?? Why were organisations such as NORAID not banned?? The Republicans did the minimum in policing on the IRA. They only banned the real IRA after the Good Friday agreements in 2001,well after they had literally broken the agreement with their attacks.


Don't try to go with the fallacy,Irish support in the US is just Democrat. 1 in 10 Americans identify as Irish American.

Multiple Republican and Democrat led governments have done very little to reign in the IRA,or Irish Republican fundraising right until the Good Friday agreement.

It also shows that you seem to also want to bury the fact both Houses need to agree any trade deal,which you very well know.

[TeePee]

Yes,there is because one of them is Pete King who is a Republican and a spokesperson for them. Plus if the Republicans were so not concerned with Ireland,then why wasn't the IRA banned for decades.

Why did the CIA give them weapons during Reagon's presidency?? Why were organisations such as NORAID not banned?? The Republicans did the minimum in policing the IRA. They only banned the real IRA after the Good Friday agreements in 2001,well after they had literally broken the agreement with their attacks.

Don'r try to go with the fallacy,Irish support in the US is just Democrat. 1 in 10 Americans identify as Irish American.

Pete King isn't a Senator. Here's the letter sent to BoJo last year: http://mcguinnessprinciples.com/lett...reland-caucus/ None of them are Senators. Pete King is the only Republican congressman signatory, the rest are Democrats.

Again, pointing out the current Anti-British stance of the Democratic party. I'm not a Republican, and won't be pushed in to defending them, in particular thanks to the Bush/Blair coalition. But where are the Neo-Conservative warmongers now?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Pete King isn't a Senator. Here's the letter sent to BoJo last year: http://mcguinnessprinciples.com/lett...reland-caucus/ None of them are Senators. Pete King is the only Republican congressman signatory, the rest are Democrats.

Again, pointing out the current Anti-British stance of the Democratic party. I'm not a Republican, and won't be pushed in to defending them, in particular thanks to the Bush/Blair coalition. But where are the Neo-Conservative warmongers now?

You mean a 100 years ago,when the same pro-Irish part of the US government actually complicated trade with the UK,which included members of the GOP. You also know very well,that them just having the House itself will complicate things.

Maybe you have lived in the US way too long and forgotten how bad the Troubles were,and how much US backing the Irish Republican movement had for nearly a century.

Also it doesn't change one fact,that no Republican government banned the IRA,or many obvious front organisations which fundraised for them for decades. If your fallacy that its only the Democrats which are pro-Irish was true,then the IRA's activities in the US would have been curtailed during Reagon's era,or Bush's era. Bush only banned the Real IRA,which broke the Good Friday agreement. The Republicans at best paid only lip service to us,but never really care enough to do anything about it.

The CIA supplied them weapons and that was under Reagon. The US has had a pro-Ireland stance for decades.Just the mere aspect of inaction itself,was bad enough.

[TeePee]

You mean a 100 years ago,when the same pro-Irish part of the US government actually complicated trade with the UK,which included members of the GOP. You also know very well,that them just having the House itself will complicate things.

Maybe you have lived in the US way too long and forgotten how bad the Troubles were,and how much US backing the Irish Republican movement had for nearly a century.

Also it doesn't change one fact,that no Republican government banned the IRA,or many obvious front organisations which fundraised for them for decades. If your fallacy that its only the Democrats which are pro-Irish was true,then the IRA's activities in the US would have been curtailed during Reagon's era,or Bush's era. Bush only banned the Real IRA,which broke the Good Friday agreement.

The CIA supplied them weapons and that was under Reagon. The US has had a pro-Ireland stance for decades.Just the mere aspect of inaction itself,was bad enough.

Again, pointing out the current Anti-British stance of the Democratic party. I'm not a Republican, and won't be pushed in to defending them, in particular thanks to the Bush/Blair coalition. But where are the Neo-Conservative warmongers now?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Again, pointing out the current Anti-British stance of the Democratic party. I'm not a Republican, and won't be pushed in to defending them, in particular thanks to the Bush/Blair coalition. But where are the Neo-Conservative warmongers now?

Just repeating the same words won't work,because it appears you can't really explain history. Most of the same lot and their descendants are still around. Just repeating the Democrats are anti-British,and the Republicans are 100% pro-British is rubbish.

Going back to 1900,when Republicans(before neo-cons existed) still supported the Irish, shows the Republicans are as "anti-British" as the Democrats are. Why should they care,when many of them are also thinking of Irish American votes in their own country? A Republican president(Eisenhower) caused the fall of Eden's government in 1956. You have zero answers for this.

You also are believing 100% what Trump told you?? You mean the same Trump,who will show how pro-British he is,the second we disagree with him,and changes what he says from day to day. Like when he threatened the UK with no trade deal,if we didn't follow his views on Huawei,etc and ban them.

The same Trump who flip-flopped on saying the NHS should be part of any trade deal,despite the electorate not really wanting this??

Or the same Trump who is putting pressure on us(and the French),on trying to tax US megacorps profits in our shores??

You can't keep saying foreign interests are "anti-British" - they are pro their own interests. Sadly,because of history it just happens that Ireland happens to be in their own interests too.

Also,why would we want to go back to the Troubles?? Is the lives of 1000s of our soldiers and civilians not enough,to actually make this feckless,not stop and think. At least you are OK,as you live somewhere else!