I am generally in favour of free trade, but I have several questions and problems.
First of all, is it normal to reduce all import/export tariffs to literally 0%? I thought most of the time free trade agreements still had a small tariff, just way smaller than normal. Either way maybe I can live with it.
Perhaps it's not normal, but I must admit I don't really see the issue with it (especially as you say it's not a dealbreaker).
I also have problems with many of the points in Section V:
-What do Marketing Boards do? Is that point important?
An Agricultural Marketing Board is an agency which markets Agricultural Products on behalf of the producer. For example, in Canada we had the Canadian Wheat Board which would buy farmer's Wheat and Barely and then sell it on their behalf, giving the profit to the farmer. As to whether the point dealing with them are important, I must admit I don't exactly understand what you mean. Are you asking if the provision dealing with the Marketing Boards is important, or if the existence of the Marketing Boards themselves are important?
-I don't think Atlasia should be enforcing its copyright laws on foreign countries and viceversa. Now, I am in favour of that happening if we were going to pass something like the UK-Atlasia common market agreement, but a simple free trade agreement should not include copyright.
Why not? Expanding our copyright laws allows us to protect the intellectual property of creators in Atlasia, I do not see why expansion is a bad idea.
-I completely oppose removing environmental protections as done in point 6.
Since this is a bilateral trade agreement I don't think we can simply amend it like with any other bill right?
A) I hate to bring this up again so soon but, like I said the rules and provisions in this treaty already exist, and things seem to be working fine. That said, this point does strike me as a perfectly valid criticism and if need be we can look into striking that part of the Treaty.
B) Well, yes, we can't amend it unilaterally, but to my understanding if we had to make some changes we could talk to the Kenyans about it, and I doubt the Kenyans would object based on the character of our negotiations.
