• Also, I quite liked this comment on how free trade agreements work from the FT comments section:

    The issue with Free Trade Agreements is that the idea sounds cool and
    there is a lot of enthusiasm: "Let's do a FTA with everybody!!!".
    What's not to like with a free flow of goods between countries??

    Then you sit at the negotiating table and you discover that the other
    country uses GMOs in their agriculture and maybe you don't like that
    but you cannot open the free trade of agricultural goods unless you
    modify your stance on GMOs. Then somebody notes that the food safety
    rules are different, maybe you consider palm oil above certain %
    dangerous while the other country doesn't. So you need to change the
    food safety rules (or the other country does).

    Then you discover that the other country is a lot more efficient at
    producing coffee pressers and your coffee presser makers will all go
    out of business and 1,000 people will lose their jobs. On the other
    hand your scissors makers are very good and they are going to do brisk
    business, however the scissors makers are based in another region from
    the coffee pressers so unless you can convince those 1,000 people to
    up sticks and move (and retrain as scissor makers) you will have
    problems selling the FTA to the public.

    Then, then, then, then...... and the list grows and grows. Then FTA
    begins to sound like a difficult proposition.

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