Reply to post: Anti-competitive?

Anti-competitive?

"that puts the onus on the EU - as it should be, given the trade deficit we have with them"

Not this load of tripe again - I thought the Register commanded more intelligent readers.

In the event of a No-Deal arrangement, let's review the likely consequences of UK/EU trade.

All trade ceases?? LOL - although some Daily Heil readers seem to believe so - we have no deals in place with the USA but they are our second largest trading partner! No trade WILL continue - it will just be more expensive.

So given this, what happens to UK imports? Well, anything we can source more cheaply elsewhere, we will - there's mostly no chance of us simply producing it ourselves - we'll simply change where in the world our money goes.

UK exports on the other hand - well, Europe swallows a LOT of them currently, and many have competitive products from elsewhere in the EU. If ours suddenly cost more, then it's MOST likely that EU buyers will simply switch to another cheaper, non-British product. Can we sell stuff elsewhere in the world to make up for this? In a word no. Our costs are simply too high - our only substantive markets are the USA and the EU - we can maybe increase exports to the US a little, but nothing like what we lose.

So we end up with a rather large fall in Exports, while Imports will remain fairly constant - that equates to a massive hike in our Trade Deficit.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Channel, they're looking at a small but significant fall in Exports. Brexit will hurt them, certainly some industries/nations will be hit particularly hard, but equally many countries will hardly be affected. Nobody will be hurting half as much as we will be.