My first consideration with trade is it affects every part of a country’s behaviour and that starts from the people with the least in society. No country is an island, even if it is an island, physically – it’s not really an island. The sea is not a barrier and neither are other barriers. We’ll go through any notion of a barrier.

So that’s why, No deal is a myth. It doesn’t exist. Regardless of what happens, we’ll still need a deal. The question is why? The usual answer given, which is not an answer is, we can trade with the rest of the world. We can trade with the commonwealth. This being related to some idea that we had a commonality with the common wealth. We don’t. Not because we were in some self claimed control, but the majority of common wealth countries are not in the same income bracket – why is that important?

So as things go, this is becoming more and more complicated as more questions need to answered as we lead to different stages. So before I answer the notion of income brackets, I have to answer why we will still need a deal. Countries have politicians. They have political parties. They are always debating, arguing, to get people in their country onside so they can gain votes to win elections. This is the same in every single country. Now, if a country is trading in something, lets say potatoes – they don’t want to give all those potatoes away. So they add tariffs when trading overseas – to get a return from the goods they lose and also to take advantage of what another country needs.

A country wants to show another country that it looks after it’s own. It also wants to show this to their own people.

Now the problem with this is you treat other countries and their problems as a hostility. That in order to communicate we need to ask for some money so that we can give things to each other. In future blogs I will give examples of this and why it takes many many years to get a trade deal completed if by the above simple example this isn’t outlined through political issues between two countries, economic issues and social issues between two countries. Multiply that by 3, or 10 countries or more and you see how difficult it becomes as countries and politicians balance these factors.

This is why a trade deal helps issues. A trade deal creates mutual recognition on shared interests. Countries with lower income brackets do what a more prosperous countries goods and services, but not at the expense of their own goods and services. So this is where tariffs appear and why countries with lower income brackets will need those tariffs to gain a return for goods that have left the country. In the same way, they won’t buy from the UK because the UK requires more in tariffs because of the strength of the pound. This is why, the UK trades more with the EU and we buy bulk from lower income countries, goods that they can produce regularly. Which is why, it is easier for these nations to trade with countries of their own income bracket with less of a loss to themselves.

This is why trade deals are then created. To avoid tariffs you share different goods and services towards mutual benefit. How long does this take? Well, you will need to know you will continue to make those goods and services and also, what do you do if you can’t make those goods and services because either country will lose a lot of money for the people.

This is a first blog post which obviously opens up many issues on trade.

What I want to blog about is how trade helps but how it can hinder as well which is why good trade can help the people most vulnerable in society and that is what a trade story should be about.