With negotiations between the UK and the EU for a trade agreement in the final (yes really final this time) stages, Tenjin Consulting's Alexander Downer and Georgina Downer look back at the history of the EU and Britain's entry to and now exit from it. 

In the aftermath of WWII, Britain was victorious with its centuries old institutions still intact. The situation for continental Europe couldn't have been more different. All countries bar Sweden had to rewrite their constitutions and rebuild their systems of governance.

This context provided the inspiration to create a United States of Europe. The aspiration was to prevent future wars through European economic integration. Frenchmen Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman (a former French Prime Minister and Christian Democrat) developed the Schuman Plan out of which came the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). Their view was that giving control over coal and steel production in Europe to a ‘common High Authority’ would prevent any one European power from developing armaments and the Continent descending once again into war.

In 1951, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Luxembourg signed the Treaty of Paris which established the ECSC, the precursor to the Common Market. However, Britain’s Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, firmly declined to join stating that ‘we should not commit ourselves irrevocably to Europe, either in the political or in the economic sphere’.

The break up of British Empire and the decline of UK manufacturing of 1950s heralded a lengthy period of economic suffering for the UK. Looking over to a much more prosperous Europe, in 1961 UK Prime Minister Harold McMillan made a request for the UK to join the EEC. He was rebuffed. French President General De Gaulle led the charge against Britain's EEC membership reasoning:

England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her interactions, her markets and her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has, in all her doings, very marked and very original habits and traditions. In short, the nature, structure and economic context of [Britain] differ profoundly from those of the other States of the Continent.

By 1971, the UK was still in the economic doldrums. France and Germany had overtaken the UK economy, and the UK's per capita GDP was half that of its EEC counterparts. As then-Prime Minister Ted Heath put it in 1971, ‘For 25 years we’ve been looking for something to get us going again. Now here it is.’

It was the promise of economic prosperity – not political union – that formed the basis of Heath’s sell to Britons to join Europe. And so, with a change in French President to the more UK-friendly Georges Pompidou, in 1973 Heath led Britain into the EEC. 

Joining EEC was the death knell for the UK’s cheap tariff free imports from the Commonwealth, including Australia. The UK-Australia Trade Agreement was cancelled in 1973 and Australia’s exports of beef, sheep meat and dairy particularly suffered. Australian exporters had to look to new markets such as the United States and Asia as the EEC closed the way to British consumers. Britain’s Commonwealth ties were truly frayed.

Over the years, the EU morphed into a supranational government, a federation of EU members states, each giving up more and more of their sovereignty to EU officials. 2009 marked a resurgence of Eurosceptism in UK with the twin crises of immigration and the Eurozone hitting the bloc.

By 2013, UK Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU and hold referendum to settle question of membership once and for all as he identified that Britons ‘feel that the EU is heading in a direction that they never signed up to”.

The result on the 23 June 2016 was clear: the UK would leave the EU. The UK did this on 1 January 2020, with a 1 year transition period during which it has been negotiating a trade deal with the EU.

While it looks like both sides will negotiate the trade deal until 30 December, the issues that remain (power over fishing waters and the setting of domestic standards) cut to the very core of the UK's sovereignty and the two sides remain far apart. No deal Brexit is still very much a possibility. 

This week on GeoPod, Tenjin Consulting's Alexander Downer tells Georgina Downer how he is coping with two weeks in hotel quarantine. The answer: not well!

On to Brexit, where the UK and EU are in the final (yes really final this time) stages of negotiating a trade agreement. Alexander expects a deal, but Boris Johnson is still leaving the prospect of "no deal" on the table. We will know in a matter of days...surely?

While we may have reached the end of the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic with approvals coming thick and fast for vaccines, arguably the even bigger challenge will be distributing the vaccines around the world. Some of the vaccines will require transportation at extremely low temperatures, making distribution to lower income countries nigh on impossible. The other issue remains the take up of vaccines. Which vaccine will you trust, if you trust any? The Russian Sputnik V, China's Sinovac? Transparency, robustness of regulatory regimes and the approvals process will be playing on people's minds. Without a vaccine there is no end in sight to the pandemic, but making people take it may be just as hard as getting it to them.

Finally, Australia's China woes continue. Allies are rallying around Australia but some are benefitting from the trade tensions, including Canada and the US which compete with Australia for the Chinese export dollar. Do values trump dollars? A strong and coordinated response to China's aggressive behaviour will rely on liberal democracies prioritising free societies and a rules based order over a strong economic balance sheet. Something to watch, especially the response from the incoming-Biden Administration.

This week on GeoPod, Tenjin Consulting's Alexander Downer and Georgina Downer speak to former Australian Ambassador to Japan Bruce Miller AO about Japan and Asia. 

The legacy of recently retired Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is significant. Abe delivered Japan eight years of much needed political stability, drove a substantial economic reform agenda, and reinterpreted the Constitution to put Japan on a more normal defence footing. But he will be remembered most for the role he played on the international stage, positioning Japan as an activist middle power. Without Japan's leadership, for example, it is likely the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership and the Regional and Comprehensive Economic Partnership would have been dead on arrival. 

In response to a more assertive China, under Abe Japan navigated this historically tricky relationship adeptly without making any concessions.  There are clearly lessons here for Australia given the bilateral tensions with China. No doubt this was discussed at the recent meeting between Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Tokyo in November. 

Australia and Japan's relationship has deepened considerably over the last two decades. A series of defence agreements means that the two countries are now as close to an alliance as one can be, without actually being in one (ie, there are no mutual security assurances between the two). 

Japan usually prefers a Republican Administration in the White House given they tend to prioritise alliances over other relationships. But in this case, it is likely the Japanese Government will welcome the stability the incoming-Biden Administration is likely to deliver in US foreign policy.  Now, someone else has got their hands on Twitter diplomacy, and they aren't in the White House!

This week on GeoPod, Tenjin Consulting's Alexander Downer and Georgina Downer discuss President-elect Joe Biden's picks for his foreign and security policy team. Biden has gone for long-term trusted advisors, most of whom occupied similar roles during the Obama Administration of which Biden was part. Tony Blinken as Secretary of State and Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor will be safe and centrist pairs of hands, but query their focus on Asia and how effective their China strategy will be.  

This week, CEO of the Cognocenti Group Alan Dupont wrote an important piece on the future of Taiwan and the possibility it might become a trigger for a hot war between the US and China (and of course the US' allies, including Australia). This would put Australia in an incredibly difficult situation: having to choose between supporting an ally or staying out of a fight to avoid severing ties with an important economic partner. Short of Taiwan declaring itself a sovereign state, we don't expect China to launch an attack soon, but it is a clear aspiration of Xi Jinping to incorporate Taiwan into Greater China so clear thinking about the consequences for Australia and others is essential. 

This week China launched its first lunar mission to collect some rock samples from the moon. Space has always been a theatre for the chest thumping of great powers, and US-China rivalry is now extending to infinity and beyond. With the growing reliance on satellites for communications and navigation, as well as espionage and military activities, what goes on in space matters, a lot. Currently the US and China don't cooperate in space. Could this be an area for future cooperation and to soothe tensions? 

In the midst of a year of doom and gloom and covid-19, it is refreshing to get some good news about the effectiveness of the Pfizer, Moderna and Astra-Zeneca vaccines. Does this mean the end of covid-19 is in sight? Or will people shun the vaccines over health concerns? Getting people vaccinated is only partly a logistical challenge. The politics of vaccines will be tough.

Finally, China's Embassy in Australia released a "14 things I hate about you" list to the Australian media and it made for some stunning reading - banning Huawei, calling for an independent investigation into the origins of covid-19, introducing foreign interference legislation, and criticising China's approach to Hong Kong, Xinjian and Taiwan, and outspoken Aussie MPs were there, to name but a few. But, within a week the Chinese Government was praising Prime Minister Scott Morrison's speech to UK think thank Policy Exchange in which he himself praised China for its unprecedent efforts to bring millions of people out of poverty. Does this mean a thawing in relations is afoot? Time heals all wounds, usually.

This week on GeoPod, Tenjin Consulting's Alexander and Georgina Downer do a deep dive into trade with Dr Pru Gordon, Executive Director of the Australian Centre for International Trade and Investment. Pru has worked on trade policy for over 25 years, both in and out of government. So who better to discuss the recent signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement with that Pru?

On paper, RCEP is an exciting development for trade liberalisation when good news has been hard to come by in recent years. It's a 15 member deal (all ASEAN countries plus Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan and Korea), covering 30% of global GDP and 30% of the world's people. No US or India, though.

For Australia, the commercial outcomes of RCEP are limited. Services trade with ASEAN countries will improve, but beyond that the benefits are minimal. It's disappointing to see the low level of ambition in this agreement, compared to the CPTPP which was inked two years prior.

The geopolitics of RCEP are arguably more interesting than the trade outcomes. The lack of a US presence in this deal and the US withdrawal from the TPP mean the US role as the global standard setter of rules and driver of free trade is diminishing. The US is actively ceding space to others to set the agenda when it comes to trade, meaning the US role in the Indo-Pacific becomes skewed towards security. Former US President Barack Obama’s warning back in 2015 about the strategic importance of the TPP (“If we don’t write the rules, China will") seems prophetic.

It's unlikely that the US will join the CPTPP under a Biden Administration. The domestic politics are tough after Trump spent the last 5 years trashing the case for global trade agreements. Perhaps a re-branding will help, but either way, these days there is more space for China, Japan, ASEAN and others to set a more Asia-centric agenda with the US out of the picture. 

This week on GeoPod, Alexander Downer and Georgina Downer take a deep dive into Brexit, lockdowns and US politics with former Member of the European Parliament, Dan Hannan.

Dan is the intellectual godfather of the Brexit campaign, successfully putting himself out of a job after 21 years arguing for the UK's withdrawal from the EU. 

For Dan, Donald's Trump failed re-election bid did not come as a surprise. But Trump's influence on the Republican Party and conservatism more generally leaves a tricky legacy. Rational economics has been dumped in favour of populist economics, and the US no longer champions the trade liberalisation agenda. 

The economic consequences of Covid-19 - high debt and deficits and bigger government - will be hard to shake off long after the health impacts have gone. The Johnson-led UK Government needs a pathway out of bigger government and to tackle the unaccountable and ungovernable QANGOs if it wants to succeed. 

On Brexit, the EU is being predictably vindictive in the last stages of the negotiations for a trade agreement with the UK. It all rests with fisheries, with French President Emmanuel Macron ready to walk away from the talks for political but not economic expediency. Dan's hunch is that a deal will be done. But it's not easy.

At least the UK has the prospect of trade agreements with Australia and the 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership to look forward to!

This podcast is brought you by Tenjin Consulting, and Australian geopolitical and strategic advisory firm.

This week on GeoPod, Tenjin Consulting's Alexander Downer and Georgina Downer discuss the implications of second wave lockdowns in the UK and Europe. These economies will take a hammering and become seriously diminished.

3 November is D-Day for US politics. Alexander has endorsed Trump but thinks he'll lose, while Georgina sees a narrow path to victory for Trump through the Sun Belt states and Pennsylvania. Still, predictions are a mugs game especially if 2016 was anything to go by.

Terror has once again visited France, with two Islamist terror attacks in the last month. French President Emmanuel Macron's response to the attacks was to diagnose Islam as a religion in crisis. This brought the ire of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Pakistan's President Imran Kahn. France hosts the largest Muslim population in Europe and these ethnic and religious tensions will continue to grow in the lead up to the 2022 French presidential election where far-right leader Marine Le Pen will once again run.

Australia's policy on China has hardened over the last few years, with the influence of Australia's security and intelligence services taking the lead over Foreign Affairs types in Canberra. China's reaction to Australia's hawkishness has been tough and Australia is now grappling with the economic consequences of standing its ground when it comes to political and commercial interference by China.  

At the Fifth Plenum of the Communist Party of China we got a glimpse into China's priorities for the next five years. Expect more focus on technological self-reliance and innovation and prioritising domestic consumption over an export-led economy while China navigates an uncertain strategic landscape and changing regional power balances. 

This week on GeoPod Tenjin Consulting's Alexander Downer and Georgina Downer discuss US President Donald J Trump's foreign policy legacy. 

On the Middle East, Trump has arguably made the biggest contribution since Bill Clinton and the Oslo Accords. Defeating ISIS, pulling out of the Iran agreement, and brokering agreements between Israel and three Arab nations has resulted in a paradigm shift in the Middle East. Will this mean peace at last?

On trade and multilateralism, Trump's legacy is mixed. Pulling the US out of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement was a setback for trade liberalisation, and the trade war with China has not delivered the promised benefits for US manufacturers. Withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Change Agreement and stopping funding for the World Health Organisation, while playing well for domestic politics, wont serve US interests well into the future. Ceding ground in multilateral organisations just leaves more room for revisionist powers like China to build their influence and craft these institutions in an image more to their liking. 

We discuss this year's biggest political news story - the US presidential election. While Trump is making a comeback, polls still put Biden clearly ahead. But the pundits are much more cautious this time given the surprise result in 2016. 

On 8 November, another country goes to the polls. Myanmar will hold its third election since its transition to democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy looks set to win once again despite her rocky legacy on democracy and human rights. Ethnic tensions and the continued influence of the military still haunt Myanmar's politics and society, though.

The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will finally come into force after Honduras ratified it. While the treaty makes the development, testing, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons illegal for those countries that have signed it, all nuclear weapons states, NATO countries and countries that benefit from the US' nuclear umbrella have not. It's hard to uninvent something and realism means nuclear weapons aren't going away any time soon.

Finally, things between China and Taiwan are hotting up, and not just between their boxing diplomats in Fiji. Expect the next US president, whether it's Trump or Biden, to be dealing with this burning issue during his term. China's President Xi Jinping is determined to return Taiwan to China and the Taiwanese aren't having a bar of this, especially considering the treatment of Hong Kong. Things will start to get rather nasty over the next few years.

This week on GeoPod Tenjin Consulting's Alexander Downer and Georgina Downer do a Deep Dive into Indonesia with the International Republican Institute's Resident Program Director, Parker Novak. Join us to discover more about the world's third largest democracy, its economy, foreign relations and response to Covid-19.

IRI is an international democracy-development organisation with offices in 40 countries, including Indonesia.

This week on GeoPod, Tenjin Consulting's Alexander Downer and Georgina Downer talk New Zealand politics. With Jacinda Ardern commanding a significant lead in the polls, it looks certain that NZ Labour will win at this Saturday's 17 October poll. It looks like New Zealanders will reward Ardern a second term (possibly in coalition with the Greens) for her efforts in guiding New Zealand relatively unscathed through the Covid-19 pandemic and her empathetic leadership in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre. New Zealand's economy, like the rest of the world's, is heading for a deep recession. With New Zealand's borders locked down, Ardern will need to navigate a Covid-normal path with the prospect of no vaccine in sight for the foreseeable future. Tough times ahead.

The Brexit talks conclude this week, with the European Council meeting on Thursday 15 October. Talks over fishing continue to flounder, with both sides putting up red herrings.... and on the puns go. Boris Johnson is still up for a No-Deal Brexit, but chances are a deal will be done to give French fishermen and women some of the British catch.

Meanwhile Australia and the UK concluded their first round of talks (albeit virtually) for a Free Trade Agreement. The prospects are good for a high quality agreement: expect outcomes of agricultural goods, food and drink, technology, telecommunications, and financial services. Now, Australia just needs to reopen its borders...

Rumour has it that Chinese steel mills have banned imports of Australian coal. It's a bit of an own goal if true given that around 40% of total coal imports to China are from Australia, but could reflect a further decline in the bilateral relationship. It begs the question: how low can we go?

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg made some major announcements on supply chain resilience and sovereign manufacturing capability in last week's Federal Budget. A$1.3 billion will go towards a “Modern Manufacturing Strategy” designed to assist Australian manufacturers in six priority areas. Another A$107.2 million in funding will go to the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative designed to address key supply chain concerns highlighted by COVID-19 in areas like health and medical products, food and food services, and chemical and plastics. Picking winners is so much fun!

Finally, vaccine geopolitics continues apace. China has now joined the WHO's COVAX initiative to distribute the Covid-19 vaccine throughout the world (if we ever get one), leaving the United States the only country not to participate. 10 vaccines are undergoing final stage III trials. The US will stick with its "Operation Warp Speed" plan to approve a US vaccine in November and produce 700 million doses by April 2021. It's a geopolitical race to the finish line with the winner securing early herd immunity, an open economy and society, plus huge soft power benefits to boot. It's Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong all over again!