Just because the EU calls it a free trade deal doesn’t mean it is one
So the EU wants a free trade agreement but only if they can slap trade sanctions on us if we breach the Net Zero “Paris Agreement” rules. Righto. We only sell about 6% of our saleable stuff to the EU, and for a small gain in that, we’re going to let them lock us into rules about energy production that affect the other 94%? Worse, we’ve been thinking about this absurd demand for months and no one in the government has figured out how to say “Not on your life”.
Half of Australia don’t want to pay a single dollar for Net Zero, we could just as easily turf the Paris agreement tomorrow and the Labor Party want to make it harder to do that?
Free trade supposedly means we can buy and sell goods without taxes, regulations, subsidies, and limits, but the EU’s version comes with requirements that we tax, regulate and limit the emissions that apply not just to our exports to them but in every single export we make to every other country. What kind of Communist mental disorder do they have?
So we gain a bit more trade with the EU at the expense of paying more for energy which makes all our exports to every other country less competitive? (And our domestic energy more expensive too?)
The EU deal with Climate Shackles is not a Free Trade Agreement. If they wanted to buy our green steel they would be welcome to, yet they are saying they want to buy our green steel but all the other steel we sell to everyone else has to be greenish too, even if our other customers don’t care. (Obviously this is just a hypothetical example, since almost no one on Earth wants to buy green steel).
And the irony is that while the EU seeks to dragoon us into the Paris Agreement, the largest single export we send to the EU is coal. The EU buys almost 20 million tons of our metallurgical coal to make steel in their last surviving smelters.
Greg Sheridan carries a warning in The Australian that the EU deal on free trade is undemocratic:
Profoundly undemocratic: Coalition warned against ratifying EU free-trade agreement over net zero
To do so would undermine its political program, destroy its credibility and contribute to the enfeeblement of Australian government and democracy.
In net-zero targets and industrial relations, the FTA fundamentally undermines our democracy by imposing legally binding commitments on future governments. It’s a profoundly undemocratic agreement, proceeding from two essentially anti-democratic impulses, which are part of the DNA of both the EU and the Albanese government.
This is a question of sovereignty. We could become a little non-voting vassal state of the EU. No control, just punishment if we disobey.
This will mean the EU gets it octopus suckers on our national policy decisions, and we may never get away
This agreement will have all kinds of pacifying caveats about how we can leave anytime, and how they recognize our sovereignty, which will mean nothing. At the end of the day as soon as the trade deal opens a new sliver of market, our farmers and small businesses will take out loans to expand operations and we’re as good as locked in perpetuity, or until the EU shafts us some other way.
Once the money is on the table for machinery, staff, land, and processing plants, the EU can use our small business pain as leverage to make us behave. Nice business you’ve got there. Be a shame if something happened to it. Now, how many Volkswagen ID.4s can we put you down for?
If Australia tried to leave the Net Zero shackles the EU just has to mention adding on trade sanctions again and all these businesses are pushed to the wall. The Labor government probably likes it that way (because small businesses don’t vote for Labor) and Labor wouldn’t back out of a multinational regulatory bomb anyway. But the Liberals and Nationals will feel that pain as their natural voters want them to leave the deal and their business donors beg them to stay in the whole EU.
The EU might not need to impose a single tariff. The credible possibility of retaliation will influence Australian policy.
And farmers might think they can just ignore the EU market, but the EU market won’t ignore them. Since EU imports will be arriving and competing for market space in Australia, in a sense, Australian farmers will be forced to expand to the EU. Running to stand still…
Fake “Free trade” is a handy disguise for a Globalist move
Even Mathias Cormann, head of the OECD, gets in on the game of lecturing us about “free trade” even though this is patently unfree, and telling us we must choose “openness” which means being open to the EU bossing us around. We supposedly need to run from the poison of “populism”, which sounds a lot like someone in Paris arrogantly dismissing 30% of Australian voters. So much for the OECD “commitment to democracy”?
Our former Minister of Finance has apparently, emigrated from Australia and moved to Blob-Land. As secretary general of the OECD his first allegiance now is the larval One World Government that pays his salary.
Finally, since Malcolm Turnbull wants us to pass the EU free trade deal we know it’s a bomb.
‘Come into my parlour little guy’
Said the E.U. spider to the A.U. fly,
‘ And don’t be afraid,
To join our free trade,
And give our Net Zero a try.’
— Ruairi
This article originally appeared at JoNova
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The post Australia/EU deal with climate shackles is not a free trade agreement was first published by the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and is republished here with permission. Please support their efforts.