Thursday 12 October 2017

Brext "No Deal" debacle continues.

It seems the knioves are out for chancellor Phillips Hammond over his "revelation" that planes may not be able to fly over or into Europe come the day of Brexit.

Actually not a revellation: he didn't make a statement, but an acceptence to a question put to him.

But EU Referendum has been blogging about this and other minutiae that will clog up the arteries of free trade the day after Brexit. That is, unless the two parties understand the issue and work together on a solution.

As it is, there is no sign from the EU side that there is any will to negotiate. Barnier is hamstrug and following his orders from the EU27 to the letter. He uis refusing to talk trade terms without developing the exit terms and our "exit bill" first. It's all about the money.

We've already in their eyes attained "third country" status and they are happy to dictate terms to us and make us capitulate just like they do with countries in Africa and Asia.

Except we are different than those countries: we do a vast amount of trade with the EU. Yes, thanks to frictionless borders, the trade flows pretty well. They do a lot more trade with us than we do with them. They have more to lose by ignoring the relalities of Brexit.

I can imagine the quese of containers of food spoiling at the docks on the way out of Europe as the beaurocratic border checker hold up the export of trade by making sure the t's are crossed and the i's are dittedwill not be looked on well by the traders within the EU. BMW and Mercedes will not be happy that their cars are held away from their intended market.

Quiet rightly if we symied inbound trade on our side, then that would be an issue for the WTO or some similar body to persue, but I'm talking about the EU itself imposing friction on outbound trade. It could be interesting within the EU as citizens and companies start to protest about export issues.

In the meantime, we'll quite happily replace EU imports from somewhere else in the world, side-stepping the EU. Initially under WTO rules but then under more formal trade agreements.

If the hiatus continues, BMW and Mercedes will simply make the cars for the UK market in non-EU countries and ship them here.

There may be a 6 week period of turmoil because that's how long it takes for containers to move from one side of the world to the other, but by hook or by crook, the trade will flow.

From the EU or not. Their call.