Quote Roy Haggerty="Roy Haggerty"No. Not a balance. Something like 50% of our trade is with EU countries, so our exports will become more expensive for customers, while the things we have to import will become even more expensive.
Meanwhile, no EU country has that sort of proportion of trade with us. Essentially, we'll take a hit on 50% of our trade, while nobody else (except Ireland) will take anything close to that sort of hit.
This is why the Brexit line about them being desperate for a trade deal was misleading. Of course their exporters will want a trade deal, but their overall economies won't need a trade deal to anything like the extent we will need one. That's a recipe to be stuffed, as we will be much more desperate than they will.
It's also worth noting that there are lots of firms in EU countries who would like very much to have the business which UK firms currently have. They're going to lobby their governments to put up tariffs so that they can force UK firms out of EU markets.
When I heard the idiots like Farage spinning their simplistic lies about foreigners desperate to give us a better deal, I was appalled. The whole reason we joined in the first place was because our economy was shrivelling outside the free trade area, because the French and German firms competing with UK firms were only to happy to erect the highest barriers possible!'"
As has been pointed out our exports to the EU represent 44% of our total exports not 50%. If you are going to round it you would be more accurate to say 40%! To try and diminish the importance of the UK market for EU exports is a mistake as we remain one of the largest markets for EU countries with some 800,000+ German cars being exported to the UK each year (one in 5 cars produced in Germany).
To put things in perspective German total exports represent 49.9% of their total GDP while UK total exports are 27.4% of GDP of which 12% of GDP is to the EU so it is only this 12% of our GDP which is at risk. No matter what happens we will continue to trade substantially with the EU even if we have access to the single market only under the WTO rules so you have to balance what we might lose to the EU because of tariffs against what we will undoubtably gain from the other 90% + of the world. Already there is a daily increasing list of countries that have offered trade talks.
In addition what those that are still promoting project fear are missing is that the WTO tariff average is around 3% with the cars being one of the highest at 10%. So if our currency has devalued by say 10% this gives a great advantage to our exports worldwide and in the case of the EU overcomes the problem of tariffs. Whereas EU exports to the UK will become more expensive because of the same currency changes plus the tariff on top! So there will be big pressure on EU governments from their business sectors to seek a friendly trade settlement or risk further unemployment in the already troubled EU.
The EU has serious upcoming problems from woefully under-capitalised banks, Italy heading the same way as Greece, another Euro crisis and of course unrest due to the immigration crisis. Add to this several leaders up for re-election next year so they do not need to deliberately self harm their economies by seeking some kind of revenge in the negotiations.
We have made the right decision for our future and it will take a few years to gain the real benefits but will be well worth it in the medium and long term. We have good arguments to come to a mutually beneficial agreement with our neighbours who must now realise they made a major mistake in blocking Cameron earlier in the year. Being unreasonable then has led to Brexit so to repeat this again will push the failing EU to an earlier demise. The leaders know they have to make big changes to the direction of the EU and they might as well start now.
