Britain member of earlier NAFTA- better than EU?

abc123

Banned
So, if somehow some organisation ( let's call it NAFTA, North American Free Trade Area, comprising at least USA and Canada, possibly Mexico too ) is formed and if Britain becomes a member in, say 60s or 70s- would membership there would be better for UK economicly and in general than membership n EC/EU?

Maybe later Australia and NZ can be included there...
 
I guess it's probably impossible to give a judgement on whether it would have been in any sense economically 'better', but the pattern of trade was already moving in favour of Europe from about the late fifties/early sixties onwards, so commonwealth free trade or a NAFTA setup was counterintuitive.

Politically it would certainly lead to a diplomatically diminished UK. The UK would be more closely associated with the US and would have much less influence in Europe, and probably the world come to that, and this goes totally against what successive US administrations from about Kennedy onwards wanted.
 
So, if somehow some organisation ( let's call it NAFTA, North American Free Trade Area, comprising at least USA and Canada, possibly Mexico too ) is formed and if Britain becomes a member in, say 60s or 70s- would membership there would be better for UK economicly and in general than membership n EC/EU?

Maybe later Australia and NZ can be included there...

Oh god yes, like many Eurosceptics I'm not opposed to the idea of a Free Trade Alliance and considering that in 1970 we had more trade with North America than with Europe such an organisation would be a massive boon and far less likely to become some sort of supra-national monster that the EEC became.

If only.............
 

abc123

Banned
Oh god yes, like many Eurosceptics I'm not opposed to the idea of a Free Trade Alliance and considering that in 1970 we had more trade with North America than with Europe such an organisation would be a massive boon and far less likely to become some sort of supra-national monster that the EEC became.

If only.............

But, wasn't british industry in pretty baaaad shape in 70s, even without free competition of much stronger US industry?
 
So, if somehow some organisation ( let's call it NAFTA, North American Free Trade Area, comprising at least USA and Canada, possibly Mexico too ) is formed and if Britain becomes a member in, say 60s or 70s- would membership there would be better for UK economicly and in general than membership n EC/EU?

No, not really. Replace Brussels with New York or Washington, and a lot of the anti-EEC/EU arguments would fit into anti-NAFTA arguments perfectly.
 
Oh god yes, like many Eurosceptics I'm not opposed to the idea of a Free Trade Alliance and considering that in 1970 we had more trade with North America than with Europe such an organisation would be a massive boon and far less likely to become some sort of supra-national monster that the EEC became.

If only.............

NAFTA - or rather, *NAFTA, with the asterik indicating an alternate form - could just have turned into a North Atlantic version of the EU, with all that entails. In fact, it could have been much worse for Britain overall. For example:

But, wasn't british industry in pretty baaaad shape in 70s, even without free competition of much stronger US industry?

Yes, British industry was in bad shape, to such a degree that in case of an alternate *NAFTA, Britain's industrial sector would have been completely destroyed, if not disappeared, by NAFTA, and ordinary Britons would have been worse off overall. Like how Mexico was basically worse off under NAFTA than they were before NAFTA in OTL.
 
Top