Beyond Brexit: the Case for a CANZUK Customs Union

Alexander MacLeod
Jul 24, 2017 · 1 min read

As the UK’s withdrawal from the European Single Market looks imminent, it is essential that a post-Brexit Britain looks wherever it can for the best free trade deals. And what might this jackpot deal look like? Yes, a CANZUK (Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and UK) customs union.

A good outline of this CANZUK initiative comes from an article written for the Financial Times by Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, in 2016. Hannan clearly states that a British-Australian bilateral trade agreement could have been reached decades earlier (had the bureaucracy of Brussels not got in the way), and that previous negotiations with Australia, regarding this issue, had been thwarted by Italian tomato growers.

Additionally, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom are the ideal economies to benefit from free movement, free trade and mutual foreign policy — their shared economic, cultural and historical similarities make this initiative a very valuable pursuit for the future — and as Hannan later goes on to say, “in an age of Skype and cheap flights, distance has never mattered less.”

References

http://ft.com/content/6d4a444a-36f5-11e6-a780-b48ed7b6126f

Written by

Cell Biology undergraduate; Classical Liberal; Calvinist.

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