Obama, concern for the UK or US?

[ProfessorPreciseaBug]

Listening to Obama, I was struck that his language seemed to be about what is good for the US not what is good for the UK. Certainly the former US treasury secretary interviewed on the Today program was very US centric.

His comment about us going to the back of the queue, (and he did say queue instead of line because he was told to) seemed to be a bit of a threat. Is he out of order?

Yes I'd rather not imagine those three running the country thanks as I've just eaten.

I have been following a few of the EU referendum threads. In all of them, including this one, there is a huge gap between the contributions of the Leave and Remain supporters.

I have to thank Mistigri, PigletJohn and others for their measured, reasoned, very knowledgeable posts. This is why I like MN - we get some really high calibre contributions here. I wish the Leave side would raise the level of their campaign and give us some meaty arguments.

Re. some of the loudest, most prolific Leave support posters - the tone and the content of the posts is such that I can't believe they are serious. Surely they must be some sort of sock puppet of the Remain campaign, persuading undecided voters to vote in with their sheer wackyness and ignorance.

Anyway I look forward to more debate.

"But surely that is better than Cameron"

Erm ... no. Just as bad if not worse. Same bunch of self-serving, destructive Tory / right wing hypocrites.

Jassy - "Yes, and many have said that London would not remain an attractive EU or EMEA HQ outside the EU. Frankfurt starts to look like an attractive prospect."

I used to work in financial markets - no major investment bank wants to put its HQ in Frankfurt - even the German ones have a major presence in London.

London is far too strategic a place because of its position on the time zones. I used to get in to work and talk to Tokyo as they were closing and finish the day talking to Los Angeles as they woke up.

Trade is not just about physical goods. In fact the UK is mainly about services. The ability of US legal, accounting, consulatancy firms to operate here is crucial. We could I am sure make life very difficult for US corporations over things like tax and regulation.

It may be true that our physical import export rade with the US is quite small but large US corporations us the UK as a base in many ways. we have power and we need to start using it in our relationship with the US. We have been a lapdog for far too long. The US was very instrumental in creating the EU and cajoling us into it when the UK was facing its major economic crisis in the 1970s. We are much stronger now.

Obama doing a good job of maintaining a straight face while explaining that

"the UK would not be able to negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU, we wouldn't abandon our efforts to negotiate a trade deal with our largest trading partner, the EU, but rather it could be 5 years from now, 10 years from now before we were actually able to get something done"

We come after the EU deal which we already knew and is in the process of still being negotiated. However, even the EU deal is not certain due to the opposition in Germany and France which even among their political class is likely to be much greater than the opposition of our political class.

In reality, a US-UK trade deal would probably be waved through in record time by our political class, who won't object in any way whatsoever to Monsanto, GM food or privatisation, while it is still being negotiated with the EU years into the future.

But the "it could be 5 years, 10 years", 100 years stuff shows how this is all back of a fag packet projection which would all change under a new US President anyway.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36122376

Time will tell, perhaps, whether they're simply lying, Beta, or whether they think an hour's time difference is manageable to save a whack of cash. Regardless it's likely to make Germany less keen to do a favourable trade deal with the U.K.

Good article in the Guardian about it. Emphasises how it played into the Cameroonian position, and syas that the EU TTIP deal is still far from completion.

"Cameron could not have asked for more from Obama's Brexit warning

The US president issued a dramatic warning about the UK’s trade deal prospects. The only thing missing was a ‘better off in’ poster
...
That said, in practice Obama’s trade deal warning has some problems. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US is still a long way from completion. The US trade representative, Michael Froman, has been in Britain this week to discuss how many chapters are yet to be agreed. There is almost no chance that this particular trade deal will be completed during the Obama presidency.

There is also an argument voiced on the left in the UK and much more widely in Germany that the TTIP is damaging – a deal for big business and not consumers. In his pro-Europe speech last week Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, went out of his way to say he opposed TTIP and that it would have to be recast.

In Germany, where Obama travels next, more than 150,000 people marched in Berlin against TTIP last October. A poll by YouGov released this week found only 17% of Germans think TTIP is good for Germany, down from 55% two years ago. One in three Germans are against the agreement entirely. "

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/22/cameron-could-not-have-asked-for-more-from-obamas-brexit-warning

I would put money on it that if we leave the EU, there will be a UK_US free trade deal years before there is an EU one, because our teams of negotiators will pass everything that the US asks for without a murmur and the people will be told by our metropolitan elite that that was in our interest.

According to Der Spiegel today she special relationship the UK/US enjoyed is cooling. Reasons - the falling defence spending in the UK and the staying away from the Syria strikes.

Germany is US' NBF and is happy to take UK's place. do what the US tell them

The falling defence spending in the UK is exactly why we need the US on side.

They are not happy with it though. They want us to keep it up and support their military operations, they are unhappy with parliament debating the Syria strikes.

Also, Stern tells us Obama wants TTIP settlement as early as this year.

Mind you, this is a publication which has GOT John Snow as top story closely followed by an article - if I may call it that - on drone vibrators.

ChardonnayKnickertonSmythe, that is a good point. There are different factions in the US and they are annoyed (rightly) that Europe is not pulling its weight over defence spending etc. Obama had a recent Atlantic Review interview where he said he was sick of "freeloaders" and of course Trump is threatening to tear everything up unless countries start ponying up (and rightly so in my opinion).

At the end of the day, Germany is very important to America because of its economic power and its position at the heart of Europe. Our political clas like to play up their importance by stressing how much America cares for us, but some of it is possibly wishful thinking.

'Stern tells us Obama wants TTIP settlement as early as this year.'

I am sure that is right because he wants that as part of his legacy, just as he wanted the climate change stuff, which may still be stalled in the US, we will have to wait and see. But I don't think he will get the TTIP deal before he leaves now, because many EU politicians now believe he is a "lame duck" president running out his term which is why we have seen people like Boris having the effrontery to attack him now when he would probably not have done so in the same way a few years ago.

I'm very as to how he will manage both TTIP and Climate change in one go. It's not like they complement each other.

'I'm very hmm as to how he will manage both TTIP and Climate change '

TTIP and climate change are both things that the global elite push and are all united on and are both things that only Trump is against. The ordinary people don't really count, only the global elite does.

'The ordinary people don't really count'

They do count to the extent that the political class has to manage them and in Germany they are having trouble managing them because there is such strong opposition to TTIP, which means that the political class probably won't be able to push it through in Germany and the TTIP deal won't make it through unless the US drops some of its demands, which they might still do in order to get a quick deal.

That is incorrect Claig. The interview was in late 2009 amidst all the 'discussion' on ObamaCare. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was subsequently signed into law the following March 23, 2010.

Sorry, I thought I saw 2007 when I read the link, but you are right, it was 2009. All of the Republican candidates are against Obamacare and say they will scrap it immediately except possibly Kasich who is the politically correct Blairite one.

For anyone seriously interested in the workings of TTIP, this is an interesting read:

eulawanalysis.blogspot.fr/2016/04/the-nhs-ttip-and-eu-referendum.html

Jassy re the time difference being the reason financial services will stay in London, the pp who said that is talking out of his backside. I am on European time and talk to Tokyo and Shanghai most mornings - I get an extra hour to do this compared with my UK colleagues. I also get all afternoon to interact with colleagues in NY. It's a non-issue really.

There are other reasons why one would hope that London might remain the main European financial centre, but a brexit would probably result in its influence waning over time. It might face more competition from Dublin and possibly Edinburgh (assuming another indyref), as well as Frankfurt.

Misti, I thought that might be the case. It sounded questionable...

The EU is negotiating hard on TTIP, because several members are worried. So, they'll try to get a better deal than the UK alone.
Cameron and whichever Tory succeeds him soon as PM wouldn't bother negotiating much, just sign up happily to TTIP, because Tories are on the side of big business. They'd love to have an excuse to sell off the NHS - "not our fault, it's international law"

The EU gives some protection - just not nearly enough - against the cruelest measures of Tory governments. This is why Brexit has been pushed for decades mainly by the Tory rightwing and Rupert Murdoch.

Where we've opted out, like maximum working hours, is usually against the interests of ordianry people. e.g. Workers may have a theoretical right to refuse working more than 40 hrs, but in practice they have to if they want to get - and keep - certain jobs.

Of course Obama wants to correct any falsehoods being spoted about what the US would do after Brexit - rather than have a very angry UK public complaining the US isn't doing like they were promised.

Obama answers to UK reporters:
“You shouldn’t be afraid to hear an argument being made" .......

"They’re voicing an opinion about what the United States is going to do. I thought, why not hear from the president of the United States what the United States is going to do?"

Tories are on the side of big business.

The EU is on the side of big business.

As is Obama.

We're stuffed whichever way we vote.

'We're stuffed whichever way we vote.'

Only in the shortterm. Over the long run, as a free independennt sovereign country, we could forge our own path and choose policies that suit us unstead of EU big business policies that we as voters have no chance of changing. That after all was why Tony Benn was against the EU, because it is an undemocratic big business club over which we the people have no control or adequate representation.

The Eu has been left-leaning before and can be again. Even conservatives in Westeran EU countries like France & Germany are far less hardline wrt workers' rights and the vulnerable in society than the UK Tories.

Tories are always for the super wealthy and big business.

The world was different in Tony Benn's times. It's simpler and freer.

How can we be successful independent country in a world of increasingly global alliances?

I don't know.
I find Europe scary in some ways - Turkey and Ukraine as members anyone?, but protective in others, environment, worker's rights.

I'm having a really difficult time deciding.