Trade Agreements (can lead to regionalism)
As I am sure you know the Trump Administration is all about boosting our economy. One of the Trump Administration’s favorite tools for boosting the economy is through the use of trade agreements. The effort to open up China to more American products is currently being batted back and forth. Then there is the USMCA; a trade agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, which will likely be voted on early in 2020.
These trade deals have tremendous ability to do good or to do harm. So what makes a trade agreement good-besides the obvious goal of creating improved economic activity for the participating countries? The answer is determined by how many and how deep are the strings/legal entanglements, which tie the member countries together.
You see, if there are too many strings, especially if the strings revolve around very complicated and likely contentious issues, there is a great likelihood those strings will at some point chafe one or more of the involved nations. If that occurs, who decides how the issue is handled? Do the individual member states decide or is there a higher court? If, there is a higher court, it will likely supersede the member states’ courts or governing bodies. If this is the case, national sovereignty and control has been eliminated and replaced by regionalism.
BREXIT (an effort to escape regionalism)
The European Union is a perfect example of a very bad trade deal. You only have had to watch the flood of immigrants from the Middle East overwhelm the social programs of the EU countries, undermine their native cultures, and bring a heightened level of violence to know this union of countries was in trouble on that one issue alone.
That said it should not have been a surprise when several years ago Great Britain’s voted to exit the European Union only to be prevented from doing so by an inability of the EU and Great Britain to agree on how to get untangled from each other. This is why it is such a pleasure to include in this newsletter the victory speech given by Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party since July 2019, who just won control of the British Parliament on the platform of getting BREXIT done. Please, when you read Boris Johnson’s speech, notice within the speech the following statement.
“Leaving the European Union as one United Kingdom, taking back control of our laws, borders, money, our trade, immigration system, delivering on the democratic mandate of the people.
This statement makes it crystal clean, when a country chooses regionalism over national sovereignty, the country and more importantly its citizens sacrifice their freedom to choose their destiny. To read the entire speech, click on this link.
