Trade Agreements

A deal struck a few years ago, affecting some 2 billion people, came into effect on the first of this month.  I've not heard anything about it in the news, so here's a little investigative journalism of my own.

It's a deal between a large number of Asian countries, reducing trade tariffs on select goods, in order to promote trade between them.  Much like the EU, it's designed to increase the competitiveness of the area as a whole, and therefore benefit individual members.

The different approaches to world domination seem to strike an interesting comparison.  america bullies everyone, invading anyone who has anything of value.

The EU tries to be the friend of everyone, with no clearly defined leadership (the epitome of democracy, with all the benefits and flaws that brings) while this new 'alliance' of sorts takes a communist approach to EU style trade wrangling.  That is to say, do what china tells you.

"The average tariff rate on Chinese goods sold in ASEAN countries decreased from 12.8 to 0.6 percent on 1 January 2010 pending implementation of the free trade area by the remaining ASEAN members. Meanwhile, the average tariff rate on ASEAN goods sold in China decreased from 9.8 to 0.1 percent."


This means that china gets everything for .1% of previous prices, while charging .6% of previous prices.  So while they still threaten other countries with force, as america does, they also screw other countries over financially, as america also does.  Who knew communism and capitalism were so similar.  It's also interesting to note that china always had a sweet deal.


It begs the question 'why?' though, because china is only a decade away from being the most powerful country in the world, and no one will stop them; so why bother striking up these deals?  Presumably the money they lose in these deals goes towards securing their neighbouring countries favour.  I doubt the likes of Vietnam could hate the americans any more though, so it all seems rather pointless from a chinese perspective.


One final tidbit:  The ten largest economies in the world, in their relative positions.

Will everyone please now realise how insignificant England is in terms of the world; but how important the EU really is.


The reason why we get crappy laws implemented unto us by the EU is because we are unimportant.  Realise this.