7. Free trade with CETA

EU with common euro is not the only issue.

Recently Belgian’s parliament rejected a free trade deal between Canada and CETA. If we looked into the issue, we could see bigger problems facing EU and CETA members.

1.      CETA is not in good foundation

The original CETA with western European nations was the stable organization. Perhaps the original CETA wanted to expand their foot print quickly, thus they have recruited many nations in Europe without a careful analysis.

The free trade with Canada would benefit more to CETA’s members as living costs in Europe twice as high as in Canada.

-         Local manufacturers and service providers have enjoyed their monopoly with higher sale prices.

-         EU’s local residents didn’t even realize that they have been ripped off by local sale man or manufacturers. Probably they didn’t have enough money to travel to North America to see the difference. Only know us by TV or Internet.

-         Having similar quality Canadian products at half price would bring down living costs in CETA members. With this, they would be able to hire new staff at lower salaries, i.e. slowly become competitive. Higher living costs would trigger higher salary’s work forces, i.e. uncompetitive.

CETA members are not united in any trade deals. Canada is a developed country with similar laws as in Europe. However our work forces are more competitive than CETA’s counterpart. This made CETA’s members worry, and then they rejected to free trade with Canada.

2.      Quality of products

Canadians are proud of our own products. Even though we’re not speaking for all Canadian companies, but CETA’s residents would be able to return Canadian products within 30 days or 90 days depending on manufacturers after the purchased date on the receipt.

If Canadian companies sold bad products, they could bring those companies to a European court or Canada’s court. This is to ensure that all companies stand for and defend their own products and reputation in front of a judge and media involved.

3.      CETA’s recruitment

They have recruited new members as quickly as possible.

If you looked back years ago, when Greek government made an EU tour to default its debts with other EU members, i.e. issue surfaced due to common euro. Instead of finding the root cause issues and resolving those, EU wanted to recruit Ukraine, which was in trouble with Russia immediately, i.e. pending issues plus adding another member in trouble status. This is called magnifying its troubles.

Common euro is not the only disaster invented by EU as discussed in another post, btw.

4.      EU nation

Having the same passport to all EU’s members is also another issue for free trade with CETA.

Some of CETA members [Romania and Bulgaria] demanded that their citizens would be granted free visa’s travel to Canada as other members of CETA such as Germany, England, Netherland, etc. Visa free is a separate issue as visa is required for visitors from some nations. Mexico did have a free trade with USA and Canada for years, but recently announced that Canada would lift visa requirement for Mexicans.

Free visits would mean lower risks of criminals or terrorists coming from those countries. Romania and Bulgaria have not been known for a long time to Canada immigration services or investigators, thus they couldn’t expect the same status as former western Europeans.

è Why didn’t they realize these two issues were different? That means that removing visa requirement for those 2 countries would be harder, because they [elected parliament] didn’t have common sense.

5.      Solutions

For EU:

-         Dismantle the common euro

-         Dismantle the EU passport as other nations like Canada can’t treat all of your members the same. EU nation is really another disaster invested by EU.

-         Stabilize CETA rules

è Unanimously agreements on all issues as requirement would be “ridiculous”. They wouldn’t get an agreement with anything related to CETA, EU, and common euro issues to outsiders. Perhaps ECB was ok to go ahead with bond buying [after years of recession], because EU was in serious trouble.

For Canada:

-         Drop free trade deal with CETA as it wouldn’t go anywhere. We can’t follow the paths that EU pursued. That would make Canadians uncompetitive. We don’t want to waste our time, because CETA or EU required unanimously agreement by members on this issue, i.e. kind of impossible.

-         Exploring free trade deals with other nations as UK, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Japan, etc. Perhaps separate trade deals with Germany and France, i.e. some members of CETA?

-         I read that we would be able to modify the current proposed trade deal with CETA to bilateral free trade deal with UK only. If this was the case, it would take only a couple of months to review to ensure accuracy.

-         It seems to me that TPP is facing obstacles in USA, which is the main driving force for this free trade agreement. Perhaps USA has higher salaries than other Asian nations, thus uncompetitive in product cost’s comparison.

-         We shouldn’t spend lots of time in TPP unless USA was back on the table, but we should explore other trades.