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Foreign Affairs and International Trade: UKIP Policy

Monday, 12th April 2010

While UKIP is realistic about the difficult economic and political challenges Britain faces, we take a positive view of Britain’s place in the world - a stark contrast to the defeatist and apologetic stance taken by other parties. UKIP recognises Britain as a global player with a global destiny and not a regional state within a ‘United States of Europe’. UKIP will:

· Withdraw from the political EU Superstate, and maintain a trade-based relationship with our European neighbours using a Swiss-style free trade agreement as the EU’s largest single trading partner. This is the deal the British people signed up to in the 1970s. We do not want or need to become a province in a European Superstate but instead want friendly and mutually beneficial trade and cultural cooperation with our EU neighbours

· Stimulate the British economy by leaving the EU. Europhile propagandists say 60% of our trade and three million British jobs depend on our EU membership. This is untrue. European companies sell us more than we sell them; we are their largest client. So our trade and jobs would continue if we left the EU, and we would benefit by escaping from its crippling over-regulation. Leaving creates jobs

· Regain Britain’s dormant seat at the World Trade Organisation. From here, a UKIP government will be free to pursue Britain’s national interests. The current situation leaves Britain unable directly to negotiate its own trade deals because vital national interests are subsumed in a common EU position that frequently reflects the interests of France and Germany

· Be the Party of the Commonwealth. UKIP will seek to establish a Commonwealth Free Trade Area (CFTA) with the 53 other Commonwealth countries. The Commonwealth Business Council estimates that a CFTA would account for more than 20% of all international trade and investment, facilitating annual trade exchanges worth more than $1.8 trillion and direct foreign investment worth about $100bn. Yet the Commonwealth has been shamefully betrayed and neglected by previous governments. Commonwealth nations share a common language, legal and democratic systems, account for a third of the world’s population and a quarter of its trade, with the average age of a citizen just 25 years. India, for example, will soon become the second largest world economy and Britain should not be tied to the dead political weight of the European Union, but retain its own friendly trading and cultural links

· Actively pursue trade deals with trade blocs such as the countries in the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This will secure trade benefits for all countries concerned

· Promote democracy, genuine human rights, and free determination around the world, supporting, for example, a free Tibet, a democratic Burma and an independent Taiwan

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