Mercosur

“Mercosur” – what the hell is that? A new shopping mall on the south side of town? That crazy new dance invented by Angela Merkel…”for goodness sakes, she’s got the hippy, hippy shakes…”? Sorry Angela, but when you wear exactly the same kind of suit for 20 years, you’re fair game. Have a tot of schnapps, poppet; that’ll calm your nerves. But seriously, Angie baby, if your health is suffering (it must be pretty stressful being a world leader) then quit now instead of whenever you are going to quit. Enjoy life, buy some new dresses, take English classes, go backpacking in Botswana…

Mercosur is a bloc of South American nations; Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay and, with perfect timing, this bloc has just agreed a free trade deal with the EU, a deal that will open up a market for goods and services for 800 million people. Great news, wonderful glad tidings for all…except the UK of course, which is surely ruing now the decision to leave the EU, especially after this august and completely democratic organisation signed a similar agreement with Japan last year (but only affecting a mere 600 million souls and a third of the world’s GDP). But we don’t care about all that, do we Brits? We’re stoic and unflappable and…well, British, by jove, so we’ll muddle on through and carry on regardless. Think of the war: taking shelter from those Jerry bombers; making do on an egg, half a cabbage, a teaspoon of flour and 2oz of gristle each week.  Missing out on these trade deals? Well, don’t worry; we’ll sign our own, goddamit. Just as soon as Boris the Bold and Beautiful signs dear old Blighty out of the Union of Johnny Foreigner Freeloaders and back into being a Sceptered Isle, then he can get down to the joyful business of arranging trade deals with those countless countries that are champing at the bit to sign on the dotted line….or not. That rugger-brained, tousle-haired, roister-doister Boris hardly did us proud when he was Foreign Secretary. Boris’ minister of state was given the monicker “Pooper scooper” as he was forever having to clear up his master’s mess. Boris seemed more concerned about making insulting jokes than taking the time to get clued up on the issue at hand. If you are bemused by Donald Trump’s governing by twitter, get ready for a full column of Boris’ Latin meanderings in the Telegraph.

Yes I know, Boris isn’t the Tory leader/Prime Minister yet, but his party obviously want a personality at the helm. Anyone who will stop a general election happening and the ghastly, wrist-slashing dread of Jeremy in No. 10.

Oh hang on a mo…reading a bit more about the EU/Meercosur deal…say what!? It took 20 years to negotiate. 20 bloody years?! Yer ‘avin’ a laff, aintcha? What the hell were they doing all that time? Did they stop the negotiations to head off down the pub or have a kickaround in the park and forget what time it was? Did they only negotiate for 3 minutes a day? Negotiators must have died/quit to join the Red Cross/had babies/had a sex change/retired to the Bahamas over the course of the 20-year blizzard of words. Ok, fair do’s, there were 4 Mercosur countries involved and the EU is an unwieldy, bureaucratic juggernaut, so it was bound to be slow going, but twenty friggin’ years….jeesch.

The Japan deal…if you are an EU citizen, you’ll no longer pay a 10% tariff on those reliable but rather boring vehicles that are made in the Land of the Rising Sun. It is calculated that just this will result in a 1% increase in GDP. Not bad, and with the increase in trade for the EU benefitting mainly the financial, business, telecom, transport and distribution sectors, it could be that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (whoever he/she is now) could feel that leaving the EU might not be all that great. The deal took years to negotiate and implement, by the way.

Now, let’s take the EU/Canada trade deal; it only took 9 years. Blimey O’Reilly, those negotiations fairly zipped along, didn’t they? They obviously did without the afternoon sessions down the rub-a-dub and only had the occasional kickabout/rodeo-riding/ice hockey game in the afternoons.

What does all this tell us? It doesn’t actually tell us, more screams into our ears that trade deals don’t come about overnight, or over a few months. They take years, or even decades. So whatever is being told to you now by Boris or Nigel or the guy propping up the bar with the Union Jack tattoo on his forehead, any benefits to the UK economy that result from a trade deal might not find their way into your bank or bitcoin account but into those of your kids in around ten to twenty years.

Happy Brexit.