A lot of this is about resource access, and that can't be magically conjured. You can have all the industry and business you want to put on paper, but this is a tangible concern for Europe where they require these things from a stable and trusted nation with a similar regulatory and political environment.

This trade matter is likely going to require a new type of agreement that has some special privileges not extended in any other case for both parties.

It's actually going to raise questions as to why the EU are A-OK with this now when a possible interpretation of associate membership is it's what Cameron was trying to negotiate the UK into when complete inflexibility on the EU side triggered the Brexit referendum.

All depends on what an associate member is of course.

Depends what they mean by ‘full’, really. I expect the EC would be happy enough to let them opt out of the euro, say. But maybe not the working time directive.

> To enable free movement of goods and services the EU insists that the goods and services are produced in an identical regulatory environment.

Doesn't seem to be true anymore, at least in every case. See the EU-Mercosur agreement for one recent exception to this, the goods we're now importing from South America don't have the same regulatory environment by far, to many of our local farmers.

A) Would never happen.

B) If it did happen, the US would just say “give us the same deal or you get cut off” and Europe would capitulate immediately.