Brexit Continues to Reverberate Around the Globe: New

Less than a fortnight after the Brexit vote, things are looking up.

Marian Tupy writes:

To start with, everyone is keeping an eye on the markets, which rose rather than collapsed. In fact, the London stock exchange ended last week higher than at any point over the last 13 months. The Pound has dropped by 8 percent, which is bad news for the British travelers, but great news for British exporters who have been revising their future earnings predictions upwards. Far from shunning Britain, countries throughout the world have been lining up to conclude bi-lateral trade deals with the world’s fifth largest economy. The United States has walked back Barack Obama’s counterproductive threat to put Great Britain in the “back of the queue.” Eleven countries, including Iceland, India, New Zealand, Australia, Ghana, Canada, Mexico, Switzerland and South Korea, are already knocking on Britain’s door. Such is the interest in trade deals with Britain that London worries about not having enough trade negotiators. That problem too shall be overcome, as New Zealand and Australia have offered to lend Britain their own trade negotiators.

To make matters even more promising, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has announced that he is considering cutting Britain’s corporate tax from 20 percent to 15 percent. That would make British corporate tax rate the second lowest in OECD countries and close to Ireland’s 12.5 percent rate. A consensus seems to be emerging that Britain will be, at least initially, a low-tax and free-trade haven on the E.U.’s doorstep, a nightmare for Eurocrats if there ever were one. 

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