| Quote: | |  | |
| 
Well you missed out a significant one with Switzerland!! 
Here is a list of over 40 EU signed trade deals plus many others in negotiation.
This includes the Euro-Mediterranean AA agreement with 10 countries as a result EU exports almost 200 billion euro per year to these!
Then there is Chile worth ca. 12 billion exports per year and South Africa worth 30 billion per year.
Are you resorting to Leave tactics of stretching the truth?
Disappointed in you  | |
| | |
You're right, I missed Chile and South Africa, so 1 every 15 years.
Not that I believe the UK would not have had better trade agreements earlier with commonwealth and former commonwealth countries such as South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
I've excluded the AA countries as it isn't clear to me that these include any element of free trade (except possibly beyond granting MFN status), but am happy to be corrected if anyone has delved into these.
But my overall point is that I don't believe it is right to say that the UK is better of trade-wise with the EU negotiating free trade deals. I think the UK would be much better off if it had the freedom to negotiate FTA on its own due to:
- Historical ties with commonwealth
- Cultural links with English speaking countries such as US, Cananda, NZ, Australia (basically 5 Eyes countries where we already have much closer cooperation in intelligence matters than the EU will ever have)
- No need to be paralyzed by internal EU politics and horse-trading - the best compromise deal for EU is not necessarily the best for the UK - and given the differences in the economy, I would imagine it is unlikely to be the best for the UK.