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Australia 'on the same page' as Canada as it seeks deeper EU alliance

89 points vrganj 2 hours ago 80 comments

consumer451 2 hours ago | parent

The reddit post links to: https://www.reuters.com/business/australia-on-same-page-cana...

vrganj 2 hours ago | parent

Ooops, I meant to link Reuters, not Reddit. @mods, could you change?

toomuchtodo 1 hour ago | parent

Tags do not work, email mods, email in footer ("contact").

s_dev 2 hours ago | parent

For me the most striking thing about this was before the Brexit referendum there was rhetoric about how the UK would form a CANZUK alliance with free movement of people and goods between these countries, forming a sort of English speaking EU.

Even if Canada and Australia don't join the EU as full members which is unlikely anyway (deeper ties are definitely on the table though), these sort of announcements should put to bed these complete and utter fantasies the UK has about leading some alternative world order where it's in charge and can go toe to toe with the EU.

https://boris-johnson.com/2013/08/25/the-aussies-are-just-li...

https://www.ippr.org/articles/could-the-idea-of-the-anglosph...

Even many British would agree that Brexit was full of absolute lies, and even to this day you still see them being repeated in certain circles. These weren't even possibilities.

smackeyacky 2 hours ago | parent

It is a total fantasy that Australia would throw back in with the ghost empire that is the UK. They literally have nothing to offer us apart from a figurehead head of state.

josephg 1 hour ago | parent

Australian here. Theres no way we’re joining the EU. Brussels is on the other side of the planet from Australia. Our major trading partners are nearby countries, like China, Japan, NZ, and the US. Not continental Europe. Europe is too far away.

ceejayoz 1 hour ago | parent

Brussels and DC are almost the same distance from Canberra.

(Also Australian, but living in the US.)

https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/southeast-asia-pacific/au...

> U.S. goods and services (exports plus imports) trade with Australia totaled an estimated $102.0 billion in 2025, up 15.6 percent ($13.8 billion) from 2024.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/eu-australia...

> In 2024, trade in goods and services between the European Union and Australia was worth over €91 billion.

(That's $105B in FreedomBucks, and excludes the UK.)

josephg 1 hour ago | parent

> Brussels and DC are almost the same distance from Canberra.

Yes. We’re not interested in joining the EU. And we’re not interested in becoming a US state.

But trade doesn’t need to go all the way to DC. By plane, Sydney to LA is about - 13.5 hours. Sydney to Brussels is 20 hours. I imagine the difference is even greater for cargo ships, which can sail directly through the pacific. I have no idea how cargo goes from Australia to Europe. That sounds like a complex route.

As for trade, the US is important but they’re not our most important trading partner. China accounts for $326 billion aud in trade annually. If your numbers are right, that’s more than our trade with the US and Europe combined.

I suspect integrating into the EU single market wouldn’t be worth it for us. We’re not part of Europe. We’re not a European country.

https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/china/china-country-brief

ceejayoz 1 hour ago | parent

> We’re not interested in joining the EU.

The article isn't about joining the EU (as the original post you replied to called it, "unlikely anyway").

> But trade doesn’t need to go all the way to DC.

Nor Brussels; Perth to Greece via the Suez cuts the time, too.

> As for trade, the US is important but they’re not our most important trading partner.

OK, but the EU and US trade with Australia roughly equivalently per the numbers, and you said "Our major trading partners are nearby countries, like China, Japan, NZ, and the US. Not continental Europe." It's just a flatly false claim.

petre 1 hour ago | parent

Chill, nobody said anything about Oz joining the EU. We live in quite different time zones. A free trade agreement on the other hand might work. Canada has one if the remaining 10 EU state would bother to actually ratify it.

epihelix 1 hour ago | parent

Did you read TFA (the Reuters one) that quotes the Australian trade minister? Or are you somehow more involved in determining trade agreements than the minister?

Trump has upended decades of stable trade relationships. I would not assume anything right now.

(To be clear, neither Canada nor Australia are claimed to be seeking to be EU members - but closer trade ties with the EU appear to be on the cards for both nations. When you can no longer trust the US to act in good faith, everything changes.)

hylaride 54 minutes ago | parent

I suspect it'll be expanding the current trading agreement to allow more direct investment. Canada and Australia both have lots of raw materials the EU needs. I suspect you'll see more types of worker visas (similar to the old NAFTA T1 styles that allow relatively easy sponsorship of employees).

I'd love to have full rights to live and work in the EU, but I'd be happy just being able to visit the EU as a Canadian and use the EU customs lines. I don't think Canada would go for full mobility. We're just now dealing with the backlash of too many immigrants from South Asia, a "flood" of poorer Eastern Europeans would probably rekindle that.

s_dev 24 minutes ago | parent

You might have missed this bit:

>Even if Canada and Australia don't join the EU as full members which is unlikely anyway

And like I point out, deeper ties are definitely on the table which is more like what will happen. The world is reorganising around US tariffs as a natural economic reaction here.

ta20240528 1 hour ago | parent

"Even if Canada and Australia don't join the EU as full members"

The European project is bigger than the EU - that's just the central core.

There's also the EFTA, EEA, CEFTA, CU, Eurozone, Shengen, CoE, and Swiss-style bilateral treaties.

See https://thisbugslife.com/2021/05/10/graphic-representation-o...

Canada can easily find a home one of these.

s_dev 1 hour ago | parent

You might have missed this bit:

>deeper ties are definitely on the table though

petre 1 hour ago | parent

Too bad those countries are so far apart even if they've once been part of the same empire.

svara 1 hour ago | parent

Amazing, let's please do Japan and Taiwan next.

GoToRO 1 hour ago | parent

Japan ambassador in Romania said just that in an interview.

akie 1 hour ago | parent

Russia and the US seek to expand by invasion, at the same time there are NINE countries with a stated ambition to join the European Union, and now there seem to be even more countries who want to "more closely align" with the EU (whatever that means).

Whenever countries consider their needs and desires, and what they want their country to be, they look at the countries of Europe - not at Russia, not at the US, and not at China.

dachworker 53 minutes ago | parent

Japan and Taiwan are culturally very foreign unlike Australia and Canada. If we add them we might as well add the whole globe.

BIGFOOT_EXISTS 1 hour ago | parent

LOL Canada should seek deeper internal alliances first. Since 2015, every year the QoL gets worse.

kakacik 1 hour ago | parent

Why not both? Perfection is the enemy of good.

More good reliable friends is always better, and fuck the unreliable backstabbing ones as much as possible and reasonable, future will sort out details. World is not static, alliances change and we may revert in future if US population decides it wants to be ruled over by more reasonable, respectable and kind people.

Gregkion 1 hour ago | parent

There is a group of people in canada which takes care of QoL and another group of people taking care of external relationships and trade.

And normally this helps a country?

cwillu 1 hour ago | parent

Is the declining QoL in the room right now?

firmretention 31 minutes ago | parent

No, it's in the increasingly growing tent cities in my town, and among the junkies that have taken over downtown Ottawa. Glad to hear you're doing well, though.

cwillu 26 minutes ago | parent

Sounds like a municipal or (perhaps) a provincial issue.

firmretention 8 minutes ago | parent

Ah yes, it's always someone else's problem. God knows the federal government is not responsible for managing anything important that might translate into poor QoL.

dmix 1 hour ago | parent

Canada has long had a very good free trade deal with the EU, which eliminated 98% of tariffs in 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Tra...

dismalaf 1 hour ago | parent

Of course the 2% of items not included are pretty substantial; agricultural products with strict quotas.

There's also strict country of origin rules so if too many materials are sourced outside Canada, even if its made in Canada it can be subject to tariffs. Not to mention needing to adhere to EU standards.

hylaride 1 hour ago | parent

Agriculture is always the hardest due to a variety of factors, including standards, but also farming is among the most subsidized and/or protected businesses in the developed world. Creating a fair and level trading system around it is difficult.

A good example is the dairy protectionism in Canada that Trump so bitterly complains about. The issue is Canada manages its system with production quotas, but the US directly and indirectly subsidizes production. Who's being more (un)fair? How do you create a trading relationship around that?

dmix 55 minutes ago | parent

One difference is in the US they subsidize corn, which makes it cheaper domestically and the support farmers get makes them more competitive on global markets. Canada does supply control on dairy, which drives up prices domestically and prevents competition. There's a reason one is called a cartel.

win311fwg 51 minutes ago | parent

> Creating a fair and level trading system around it is difficult.

There are no real limitations outside of dairy, poultry, and eggs; same as on the US front. If it is so difficult why is there nothing in place, aside from those three categories? Are these the only food categories that matter to people? What about the food that the animals in those categories eat?

> but the US directly and indirectly subsidizes production.

Since the Obama era, the US and Canada have had essentially the same subsidy system, save dairy, poultry, and eggs, which, as you pointed out, get their own special rules. But as you pointed out they are still subsidized indirectly via things like corn subsidies, which is where Canada and the US are now effectively on the same page (that wasn't always the case, of course, but the reforms happened a long time ago now and what went on 30 years ago doesn't mean much anymore). When cooler heads prevailed the US played fair in aligning their system to Canada's, so why isn't the same being willing to be offered in kind? Changing the diary, poultry, and egg system doesn't mean giving up subsidies, if the people want to continue to offer subsidies. The US model already offers a way to provide that. Canada already accepts that for other food products, so there is nothing unprecedented there.

Of course, it's not really about the farmers/production, is it? It is about protecting Saputo, Lactalis, and Agropur's triopoly.

hylaride 30 minutes ago | parent

> Changing the diary, poultry, and egg system doesn't mean giving up subsidies, if the people want to continue to offer subsidies.

The US subsidies tend to be more indirect, meaning that the large agri-corporations capture most of it. Farmers in the US have been struggling for years and the Canadian farmers know this (and for better or for worse have political capital at their disposal).

The reason dairy, poultry, and eggs are under Canada's system is because they are not bulk commodities that ship around the world like grains do. Canada also doesn't allow a lot of the farming methods (including hormones) that the USA does. The original aim of supply management was to smooth out the market, but of course has morphed into a cartel.

For the record, I'd love to see the dismantling of supply management the same way New Zealand did (and became an export powerhouse of processed dairy products after). I do love me some cheese and I wish the EU cheese was more economically available.

win311fwg 17 minutes ago | parent

> The US subsidies tend to be more indirect, meaning that the large agri-corporations capture most of it.

It's essentially the same system, with the primary subsidy being paying 60% of crop insurance premium in Canada and 62% in the US. Of course since crop insurance is acre-based, those with the largest landholdings capture most of the subsidy, but that is equally true in Canada. It's probably true that the US has some larger farms, given much larger arable landbase (and one of Canada's largest farms just having recently gone bankrupt!), which is what I expect you are trying to say, but I'm not sure how pertinent that is as it is still an equal payout on a relative scale.

> they are not bulk commodities that ship around the world like grains do.

Neither is milk from other animals (e.g. goats), other types of meats (e.g. pork, beef), etc. but none of these have the same system. Moreover, until 2009 tobacco was also supply managed under the same system and it is a bulk commodity that is shipped around the world. So I'm not sure your theory, as fun as it is, holds.

> Canada also doesn't allow a lot of the farming methods (including hormones) that the USA does.

It's a mixed bag. Canada puts higher value on animal welfare, but is much more lax when it comes to things like pesticides. The US doesn't allow hormone use in poultry, so that doesn't really explain what purpose supply management serves either.

ovi256 1 hour ago | parent

It has always surprised me that the 'free world', NATO countries, developed countries (including Japan, Taiwan, Australia), however one wants to call them, do not have at least free trade, if not free movement of people and capital, between them.

A travesty, IMO. And a great loss making us all poorer. Not a patchwork of point-to-point free trade agreements, but several hub agreements that countries join, and, in time, the hubs agree to free trade between them too.

Steve16384 1 hour ago | parent

I guess that's what the EU is trying to be.

graemep 1 hour ago | parent

The EU is specifically European - its in the name. Many of the arguments for the Eu that came up during Brexit were based on the importance of geographical proximity and shared culture.

ceejayoz 1 hour ago | parent

> The EU is specifically European - its in the name.

I don't disagree, but by this standard North Korea is a democratic republic, and Turkey's membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a bit odd.

nemomarx 1 hour ago | parent

The schengen zone is exactly this hub agreement isn't it?

Aldipower 1 hour ago | parent

Is Schen-zen a city in China?

gus_massa 1 hour ago | parent

IIRC schengen zone is about people, not about goods. There are like 10 almost overlaping zones. This is a map recently posted by amenghra:

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1tda6wl/european_in...

pjc50 1 hour ago | parent

The politics of this is grindingly difficult; people think of "them and us", not "we're all together in three free world". Achieving free trade means either dismantling all the little market carve-outs that local politics relies on, or enshrining them in the collective (EU farming policy).

Imagine trying to integrate the politics of Japanese rice farming into the CAP.

dismalaf 1 hour ago | parent

Canada doesn't even have free trade internally... It's literally easier to sell to the US or EU than to another province.

thunderfork 1 hour ago | parent

It'd depend on what you're selling, surely? I've never had any problems of this sort with basic retail product, for example

dismalaf 46 minutes ago | parent

Well, let's say you sell online, no matter what you're selling, you need to apply the PST/HST of the province the buyer's address is in. And then you need to file a tax return for every province you sell to. Now some provinces have a sales threshold under which you don't need to do a separate tax return, others don't. Some have an HST collected by the Federal government, others don't. And all the PST/HST rates are different. This also applies to digital goods, SaaS, etc...

The US has higher thresholds in every state and no federal sales tax, and buyers pay the duties.

emptybits 43 minutes ago | parent

Food and especially liquor continue to have stupid barriers between provinces. But intra-provincial trade increases every year and the CMRA legislation from last year should improve that.

There are no tariffs between Canadian provinces and never have been.

dismalaf 36 minutes ago | parent

> There are no tariffs between Canadian provinces and never have been.

Did I say there were?

emptybits 5 minutes ago | parent

No. You claimed Canada doesn't have free trade internally. The most common barriers to free trade are tariffs. IME tariffs and duties are what most people think of as non-free trade. Witness the current US-Canada trade war. I can order lots of things from all around the world and the main resistance to me doing that are tariffs and duties, wouldn't you agree?

I'm clarifying that the trade barriers on things like liquor and food between Canadian provinces are regulations, not tariffs.

valeg 1 hour ago | parent

PRC's trade surplus is pushing for a wide customs union. This is a part of this trend.

world2vec 1 hour ago | parent

An "expanded" Schengen Area that crosses the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and brings Canada, Australia (and Japan, maybe?) into the fold would be an incredible thing. I'm all for it.

bojan 54 minutes ago | parent

It would be nice, but it's too high a bar to set, as the visa policies differ significantly between the three.

There is a real danger the Schengen agreement itself will collapse in the upcoming years - Germany is already ignoring both the Schengen agreement and its own courts by keeping border controls.

landosaari 5 minutes ago | parent

Step 0: be included in Eurovision

Australia 2015 √

Canada 2027 √