CANZUK Free Trade Union

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The UK will leave the European Union at the end of 2020 and could form the CANZUK free trade area in 2021. CANZUK would be a free trade union between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Canada has a population if 38.2 million people and a GDP of $1.8 trillion.
Australia has a population of 25.5 million people and a GDP of $1.4 trillion.
New Zealand has a population of 4.4 million people and a GDP of $196 billion.
The UK has population of 67 million people and a GDP of $3 trillion.

The combined population is 136 million people and a combined GDP of $6.4 trillion. This would make the fourth largest economic entity after the USA, China and the European Union. It would be ahead of Japan and Germany.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom each share the same language, the same Westminster parliamentary system, the same respect for common-law and the same Sovereign. They were the core of the British Empire.

The region would be a top free trade zone and would be nearly half of the GDP of a post-Brexit EU.

Establishing the region would require negotiating a free trade agreement and a freedom of movement deal.

Movement within the commonwealth is already fairly frictionless.

After his victory in the 2020 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election, Erin O’Toole, made CANZUK a priority in his platform. The Liberal Party is currently governing Canada.

It is not assured as there is also political opposition to the arrangement in each country. However, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom regard each other’s countries as their country’s closest friends and allies.

The Trans-Tasman Travel Agreement (TTTA) between Australia and New Zealand would be the model for extending an arrangement to include Canada and the UK. The TTTA allows citizens the freedom to travel, live and work between the two nations. However, voting rights and access to social security have been limited for New Zealanders in Australia (and vice-versa) until an application for permanent residency has been granted by the respective host country.

The proposed CANZUK agreements would be different from the European Union. There would be mutual agreements on constitutional and diplomatic matters but there would be no supranational parliament, court system or currency.

SOURCES- Canzuk International
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

56 thoughts on “CANZUK Free Trade Union”

  2. Upvoted for the Greek. Though I don't think the Irish would like the ' micra Brettania' much. Back when the Fenians were fighting for indepedence, calling somebody a ' West Briton ' was equivalent to calling him a lickspittle of the English. The official name for the UK is ' The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'.

  3. Between Industrialized countries that make different kinds of products (Spain versus Germany), you can trade and form a trading block. In this case, the resources will come from outside the block. Between resource countries, you can form a cartel, assuming you have cornered the market. If not, then you are SOL. You will be competing with the other parties in your block. There are still things to trade because they all make something, but the impact is very muted if your products are primarily stuff you dig out of the ground.

  4. Your point makes sense, but I'm confused by the way that the EU itself doesn't seem to have economic complements either. In the opposite extreme of not having any resource exporters (except agriculture and Norway, which isn't technically EU anyway).

  5. Great Britain is more a historic term. The place is usually referred to as U.K. But the UK is not the only nation who is unhappy with the EU. If the other members would put their membership up for a national referendum I think some others would want out as well. Especially if the UK can pull it off with little negative consequences.
    There is a possibility that nations will not merge in the near future, but rather divide, especially if there are cultural and language differences between them.
    Czechoslovakia already a small country broke up into 2 smaller parts. Yugoslavia, also quite small, split into several parts. The Soviet Union of course as well. Who knows if or when the US will break up.

  6. There is a problem with this picture. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are primarily resource exporting countries. GB is tiny in terms of overall resource consumption. As the developing countries continues to industrialize, GB will lose more share of natural resource consumption. How do you form a union when there is so little economic complementary in this union. Economically, Canada and Australia are competitors.

  8. A lot of the Brexit rhetoric was aimed at "controlling our borders" to stop immigration from (often specifically) Romania and Pakistan. The irony is, we already had control over them, and Pakistanis being part of the Commonwealth can still not only come here unimpeded, but also vote in our elections. Brexit was almost entirely racist in its motivations, moronic in the rest.

  10. Easily solved at the border, like between UK and France. We have plenty of trucks from Eastern Europe driving around, no problem.

  11. But there HAS been economic collapse, mass shortages etc.

    It's just that it happened in almost every country in the world this year. So any Brexit effect has been impossible to detect.

  12. And the UK is dear old mum who is going quite senile these days, but we can't bear to kick her out.

    And Ireland is the kid who old mum kidnapped one day, tried bringing up as one of her own, but who ran away when she was only 14.

  13. There has apparently been a study, carried out in the late 1960s by a chap called J.J Leeming (who was a Brit – which may have biased his results), which suggests that when you take all other factors into account, the road accident rate is slightly higher in countries that drive on the right compared with those that drive on the left, thanks to the handedness factor.
     The majority of the population is still right-handed and right-eyed, so it makes sense to have your dominant hand on the wheel actually controlling the direction of the car while the non-dominant hand moves the gears or changes the stereo, and to have your dominant eye getting the best view of the traffic.

  15. Derivation of Great

    The Greco-Egyptian scientist Ptolemy referred to the larger island as great Britain (μεγάλη Βρεττανία megale Brettania) and to Ireland as little Britain (μικρὰ Βρεττανία mikra Brettania) in his work Almagest (147–148 AD).[29] …
    After the Anglo-Saxon period, Britain was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136) refers to the island as Britannia major ("Greater Britain"), to distinguish it from Britannia minor ("Lesser Britain"), the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany, which had been settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by migrants from Britain.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain#Derivation_of_Great

  19. I would think that it would take slightly more attention to ajust knobs and push buttons with your left hand. The AC and the radio are generally on the left in a right hand drive vehicle. That likely means a fraction of a second less attention to the road. Mutiplied a gazillion times, and more accidents?
    Yes. The US has more fatal accidents, but I think you have to look at the causes (2016):

    • Distraction-related deaths (3,450 fatalities) decreased by 2.2 percent;
    • Drowsy-driving deaths (803 fatalities) decreased by 3.5 percent;
    • Drunk-driving deaths (10,497 fatalities) increased by 1.7 per­cent;
    • Speeding-related deaths (10,111 fatalities) increased by 4.0 percent;
    • Unbelted deaths (10,428 fatalities) increased by 4.6 percent;
    • Motorcyclist deaths (5,286 fatalities – the largest number of motorcyclist fatalities since 2008) increased by 5.1 percent;
    • Pedestrian deaths (5,987 fatalities – the highest number since 1990) increased by 9.0 percent; and
    • Bicyclist deaths (840 fatalities – the highest number since 1991) increased by 1.3 percent.

    Distraction deaths appear to be down in the US (2017: 3,242 and in 2018: 2,841) mostly because cell phone distraction is down: https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-distracted-driving

    I am also guessing that people text with their right hand mostly and if they are in a car with the steering on the right they are more likely to block the view of their right side view mirror with the phone…making texting slightly more dangerous.

  20. To me, the important part of this is the Free Movement part. That would be fantastic. I just wish they'd let US citizens in on that.

  22. It's more than a little misleading to say that the *only* benefit of sacrificing some autonomy on those issues is "a few percent higher GDP". In addition to a higher quality of life (the same goods and services for less money), people could travel and relocate more easily, realize higher wages and pensions, count on more geopolitical allies, etc. And now, they can't. Do they have buyer's remorse? I'd wager a majority of them do. But, the die is cast. Let's hope their prospective trade union with North America's third-largest economy and a Pacific island with 4 million people is as beneficial for them as staying in the EU would've been.

  23. Seems like decent plan, though the expected gains would not be huge as these countries are distant and already have fairly free terms of trade. More important aspect is probably migration. I suspect many elderly Britons would enjoy to retire to Australia or even New Zealand.

    And for all the whining and freak-outs Brexit just didn't matter much either. The anti-Brexit people were predicting economic collapse, mass shortages, etc. It was just never realistic.

  25. I'm pretty sure the great refers to the political union with Wales and Scotland, not its superiority on the world stage.

  26. Imagine if the USA were a part of a "federation" with even more populous players, say, India and China. Every time a decision were to be made, the USA voice would outvoted by China, India and Bangladesh.

    Your trading rules, your immigration policies, your borders, your farming policy, your financial policy would be decided by this supranational strucuture, but you would also have a few percent higher GDP per capitca. Would you like that trade off? If no, why would you be surprised that GB want out of the EU? Not everything is about money…

  29. Yep. The mere fact that "[this] idea has [not] had any serious consideration among Kiwi's, in NZ politics or media" just reveals how uninformed most Kiwis are, [thanks to] how pathetic our media is and how mediocre our politicians are. I say this is a Kiwi who's lived 20 years overseas and shakes his head sadly every day at the country's lack of direction or drive.

  30. Oh yes, the New Zealand Herald, our very own "newspaper of record" where we can read such neutral headlines and objective reporting as "Commander-in-'cheat', desperate Donald Trump clings to power".

    Trading with democratic free countries with a common heritage and language is much preferable to a communist dictatorship that puts minorities in concentration camps and carves up prisoners for their organs.

  31. I just hope that Canada won't "punish" Great Britain for the "sin" of leaving the EU and refuse a trade agreament. You never know with liberals.. In many cases, the ideology really trumps their economic interest. Just look how Germany has pushed to make the future trade agreements with Great Britain as bad as possible so as to deterr future defections.

    After all, everybody wants the trade, and very few want the migration policy of the EU and a supranational level of government….

  32. Is that true? Is there a specific orientation preference in human brains that make left hand trafic safer? Could you back it up with some data?

  33. Did anyone notice the massive distances which will be an obstacle for big trade? You can add up the GDPs but that will not make the CANZUK trade even closely comparable to any of the other markets mentioned in the article.

    And.. did anyone notice the big difference in time zones? That will be a massive hurdle also for services cooperation.

    If you do not want to get along and prosper with your direct neighbours than turn to your antipodes. That is what ideological nationalism brings you.

  34. Never heard of Canzuk, but understand that C, A and NZ are the legitimate kids of UK. South Africa is the bastard child with UK, Dutch and Black parents and USA is the hippie child that genetically modified itself and became bigger that its parents.

  35. Hmm – but can you imagine the accident rate for the first year or so? Especially among elderly drivers?

  37. I don't know enough about trade agreements to know how well this would or wouldn't work. But, I do know that all the "can-zook" memes are going to be inescapable for some time.

    In all seriousness, no matter your stance on the UK/EU situation, this particular development will be interesting to play out. Makes me wonder if politicians from multiple countries would try to put a trade agreement merger on the table between any North American agreements and CANZUK.

  39. mate i think your kidding yourself if the news articles your reading are true mate the herald and newshub are the joke cheers mate enjoy reading
    Gary Murray

  40. Googled media sites like The Herald, Stuff, Newshub, there's a few articles, only a few, the only politician I know of whose used the term "CANZUK" is Bridges. though come to think of it he got on the evening news with the story a few months back.
    I think you're kidding yourself if you think the idea has had any serious consideration among Kiwi's, in NZ politics or media.

  41. It's cool that the UK is now going to have to beg [checks notes] Canada and New Zealand to be part of a new trade agreement. Brexit will probably go down as one of the greatest self-owns in modern history; pretty much everything the country imports will get more expensive, almost everyone's quality of life will measurably depreciate, and for what? So they can kick some Poles and Slovenians out? Good fucking Christ you Brits are dumb as rocks. At least we Americans had the good sense to quit Trump after four years lol.

  44. Mate I live in Auckland and everyone I know, knows about CANZUK my Mother, Father, Sister and 15 work friends know about it so surely more people do, Cheers.

  45. hi Gary a fellow Gary here just thought id reply to tell you how wrong you are you see Almost no one in NZ has heard of CANZUK, and our priorities would remain with other, larger, trade agreements like TPP successor CPTPP, though with Trump gone TPP is likely back. that you for taking your time to read my reply really makes me happy and wholesome good onya legend
    Gary Fletcher

  47. hey mate i consider myself a bit of an expert on this area of agreements id love to get in touch with you and inform you that you are way off the mark mate, cheers big ears love Gary Murray

  50. 'The NZ economy is smaller than Greece.' True, just – $206 billion versus $209 billion last year. New Zealand trade with UK is probably bigger though. But nowhere near as big as our trade with China.

  51. Your comment makes about as much sense as when the libtards over here call black trump voters white supremacist. Last time I checked most of the EU is solidly white majority so how Brexit is racist is just retarded and actually would be the opposite if so was true.

    When your argument cannot pass common sense reason just fall back to the ole racist racist racist. Then is all about the feeelz so people are more willing to blindly damage their own interest to stop a imaginary monster.

  53. Almost no one in NZ has heard of CANZUK, and our priorities would remain with other, larger, trade agreements like TPP successor CPTPP, though with Trump gone TPP is likely back.

  54. The 'Great' should be removed from Great Britain, now it be just tiny island, just Britain, one of many developed countries we have here and their number is increasing each passing year. But with EU they at least could be a part of superpower block, in near future possibly EU will become a country like USA(states which integrated and formed something we call now United States), than just being their small, poor neighbour which never will be treated on equal terms. You can say languages are a problem, but technology (universal translators, AR glasses with instant perfect translations, brain interfaces and others) will solve language barriers quite soon, maybe even before 2030. Without language barriers, national boudaries will become even more blurry than today. Culture thanks to internet will become global. US in medium-long term could work on becoming one country with Canada and after that maybe even merge with Mexico. I know some AmeriKKKans will not like this idea, but the truth is that as years go by, whites will become minority in US, so it won't be hard to pass such law and sell the idea in a country dominated by non white people, latinos being largest group

  55. And thanks to membership of the EU we mostly had free trade with Canada anyway. A Canzuk deal just gets us back to where we were. At least they are all white and speak English, so the dimwit racist Brexit gammon voters will be happy.

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