Erm....
There I was talking about Opportunity and I had not even
read the news....
Somewhere amongst all my posts wittering about the possible impact of Brexit, before the vote, I said that the #5 economy in the world could not possibly be ignored when it came on the market. That other countries around the world would see that economy as a HUGE opportunity to be grabbed before someone else does.
Do I not recall that Australia was one of the countries pushing hard for the UK to stay because it would be "better for them"? Apparently it's now "better for them" to have an open trade deal with us. Maybe because our economy is so much bigger than theirs and also because they already had trade with us from within the EU. Free Trade will net them much more than the restricted trade of our EU Days did.
Right now there is a huge kerfuffle about how it's going to be so "difficult" to create trade agreements because we're missing all those trade negotiators we need. It seems to me that "free trade" needs significantly less negotiators than "closed trade" the way the EU does it. After all, how many negotiators did it take to get that offer from Australia?
I'm willing to bet that the second the Brexit vote came in the CEO's of Australian countries were beating the PM's door down and clogging his phone lines demanding that he gets a trade deal set up "pronto"...
Australia won't be the only country like that. Given the position with China right now and the UK permanent seat on the UN Security Council, we might find some interesting overtures into the Chinese economy. Much to the detriment of the EU and their €60bn trade imbalance with the UK..