I've been watching with interest as Yingluck has been trying to establish a FTA with the EU, in particular Germany and France and I was wondering whether this is likely to impact on the prices of European cars?

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaah, to many fingers in the pie this end, BUT, as drug dealing, road deaths, corruption is being wiped out at a stroke, who knows.

Don't forget the flooding!!

If they can significantly reduce the import tax which is supposed to be a big part of a FTA (well thats my limited understanding) then its not that far fetched as that's the main reason why EU cars are fiendishly expensive, it would certainly be a vote winner with the hi so's.

Ahhhh well I have few years left with my trusty old pick up, so will just have to wait and see but it woud bloody nice if goods other than Liebfraumilch and bratwurst got some tax relief =]

Won't happen.

It will affect the used car market heavily and face strong opposition.

Also, cheaper imports would affect the local car industry who has spent billions tooling factories. The will lobby against such free trade.

Won't happen any time soon.

Australia has many FTA's in place and also high taxes on motor vehicles. BOI's, tax breaks and investment incentives always cost someone.

To free trade or not to free trade, that is the question... (that Thai politicians will probably avoid as long as possible).

Thailand has given local manufacturers generous import protection for years resulting in investment and jobs. For car buyers, import protection is too high leading to uncompetitive car specs and prices.

Australia had a similar situation in the past. Import protection in the late 70's and 80's was very high but were dramatically reduced in the late 90's. This was fairly controversial at the time but the competitiveness of local cars did improve and the used car market did not self destruct. There is still some import protection but not enough to protect the Australian manufacturers from the stronger A$ and other lower cost manufacturing centers (like Thailand). Biggest selling cars in Australia now are imports with sales of Commodores and Falcons behind models from Hyundai and Mazda, not to mention the odd Hilux from Thailand. Australians are even buying Chinese utes!

The next few years will be interesting as the Thai car manufacturing industry may face some of the same problems.

Many people do not pay their fair share of income tax so high tax on luxury goods ie. cars is a way the gov. collects that tax. I foresee no change in the tax but if the car price goes down a bit maybe the overall price will drop by the same small amount.

Thailand already has F/T agreements with Japan and Australia. The benefits from Oz were meant to phase in over a 15 year period...as yet I haven't seen any dramatic changes - notably wine and cars from Oz still seem to be taxed out of the market.

Merc and BMW were very worried about the Japanese deal as it meant that the Lexus would come in avoiding the huge duties on imported cars.....I haven't noticed that either.

So I'd surmise that any effects of a free trade agreement would be similarly unnoticeable.