We Can Be A Global Hub, Leading World With Our Free Trade

With so much of our attention understandably focused on the pandemic, it’s easy to overlook what else is happening in the world.

- Stephen Pollard

That’s one reason why there’s been relatively little coverage of a trade deal that was reached last month with Australia. So it was useful to be reminded this week in a speech in London by the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, now an adviser to our own Government on international trade, of just how advantageous a position the UK is now in, thanks to Brexit. We have the potential to lead the way as a global trading nation.

One of the much-trumpeted benefits of Brexit is that we are able to agree free trade deals across the world. As an EU member, all our trading arrangements were managed by Brussels. That meant that our long history as a maritime island which grew prosperous from global trade was consigned to oblivion.

We could, of course, still trade wherever we wanted. But we could no longer agree our own terms for that trade. Now, however, we are free of the shackles of Brussels and can reach our own free trade agreements across the planet.

TRADE is one of the wonders of economics. Crucially, both sides benefit from free trade, which makes it not only a brilliant mechanism for lifting nations out of poverty but the only reliable and sustainable mechanism for doing so.