Originally Posted by
drillerpie
I don't think it was 11 years but I might be wrong, anyway that's why I chose a simpler deal as an example.
Another interesting reason why the Canada deal took so long was that the Czech Republic held out for visa concessions for Czechs in Canada and eventually got them. This is interesting for two reasons:
Firstly because the Czech Republic would ordinarily have no negotiating power over a big country like Canada, but as part of the EU it does. This is a real life example of collective bargaining. It works.
Secondly it shows that free trade deals are not as easy to negotiate as people think, countries use them to extract concessions, usually visas. If anybody thinks we're going to do trade deals with China, India, Turkey, Brazil etc without having to cough up lots of holiday, student and work visas, they should get ready for tariffs.