A NEW DAWN FOR THE ANGLOSPHERE
One of President Barack Obama’s first acts upon moving into the White House was removing the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. One of President Donald Trump’s first acts — within hours of moving into the White House — was to return the bust to its honoured place.
The U. S. and the U. K., the two greatest democracies in the history of the world, the two greatest exponents of free markets and free trade in the history of the world, are back from the brink, each having flirted with European- style socialism, each having recognized that European values and European economics led straight to oblivion. Now these countries are striking a new alliance.
Fittingly, Trump invited U. K. Prime Minister Theresa May to be the first foreign leader to visit him in the White House and, fittingly, when they posed on Friday for the official photo op following their luncheon meeting, they did so on opposite sides of the Churchill bust.
Trump and May, the new leaders taking their countries out of the wilderness, met to renew their countries’ special relationship, forged on traditions of free trade and free peoples. The Anglosphere is back. Once the U.S. and U.K. conclude their negotiations for a freetrade agreement, their free- trade zone will be the world’s largest, 50 per cent greater than the European Union from which the U. K. will have extricated itself.
The U.K. will have traded membership in the EU — a trade cartel that prevented it from negotiating freely with the U. S. or any other country — for membership in a cross- Atlantic trade zone that will allow it to trade freely with any other country, and with the EU.
As significantly, the U. K. will once again become fully sovereign, able to control its own borders, make its own laws and set its own course for its future. Its Faustian bargain with the EU — the soulless exchange of its sovereignty for the cash promised by access to the EU’s monopoly market — will be over. The U. K.’s future will be secure, unlike that of the EU, which is reviled by much of its citizenry and likely to shrink further if not collapse entirely.
The U. S. awakening from its infatuation with internationalism under Obama had obvious parallels. Like the U. K., it was losing control over its borders, its citizens increasingly unable to recognize their country and fearful of terrorism. Welfare dependency was growing as the work ethic and respect for the working class declined.
America’s sovereignty, t oo, was being eroded by the likes of UN agreements on global warm- ing, and by the establishment of an EU- like quasi- governmental agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have seen the U. S. forced to comply with dictates from bodies like the UN’s International Labour Organization and later, if the EU’s history is any guide, by the TPP’s own administrators.
Both countries made the same fundamental decision: to abandon a vacuous if high- sounding internationalism in favour of a nationalism based on a love of one’s own country, a responsibility to one’s own citizens, and a reverence for one’s own traditions. In this return to the human norm — Amer- ica first for the Americans, Britain first for the British — their economies would thrive by increased trade around the globe, rather than being limited to the regional blocs bodies like the EU and the TPP represent.
Given the potency of this new U. S.- U. K. free- trade zone, blessed not only by size but by a common respect for property rights and the rule of law, common customs and a common language, Canada and other members of the Anglosphere will doubtless want to join. The common culture of the Anglosphere would make such an expanded union feasible but neither necessary nor desirable.
Bilateral free- trade deals could be struck instead, probably much more quickly since they would avoid the time-consuming negotiations required when many parties must agree to compromises required by a few. The U. S. and U. K. aim to conclude their free- trade negotiations in as little as three months. In contrast, Canada’s comprehensive trade agreement with the European Union took seven years and counting. Bilateral free- trade deals have another thing going for them — they are a formal goal of the majority of the Anglosphere, as agreed to a decade ago by the countries of the British Commonwealth.
A multilateral trade zone would also not be desirable because the larger it grew, the harder it could fall, making all of its members vulnerable to the kind of catastrophic collapse seen in the U. S. S. R. and foreseen for the EU. Large trading blocs would become regional monopolies, discouraging trade among one another while also, inevitably, developing aspirations to political power and undermining the national aspirations of its members.
Trump wants to make America great again. May wants to make Britain great again. Each country can do it, on its own and together, too.
IT WAS LOSING CONTROL OVER ITS BORDERS, ITS CITIZENS INCREASINGLY UNABLE TO RECOGNIZE THEIR COUNTRY.