The Brexit promise was to leave the EU and open better trading options with the rest of the world. Outside of the EU, there is no issue reducing VAT, customs fees etc. In fact, WTO rules even allow more competitive options between countries if the UK chooses to lower associated fees in the WTO. Additional the UK is able to negotiate trade deals for it's own interests rather than concerns about protectionism for the EU. None of this can be done by the UK in the EU.
Think of 27 people negotiating, all with very different agendas, versus one person with a clear agenda.
Why do you believe that the EU would be in a better position? It's like a rat king when it comes to negotiating, 27 countries pulling in different directions all with different desires.
It also has a lot wider range of industries to protect, so if the UK would be happy in scrapping food subsidies to let African food be competitive in our markets, but other countries like France want to retain subsidies for protectionism of their farmers, it's no dice.
That scenario is exactly what happened in the Doha Development Round.
> One would think that the EU would be in a better position to get better deals than a single country.
The EU has a history of being really slow at negotiating trade deals unfortunately.
Further, the EU enforces VAT fees and implements protectionism with these methods to favour EU-based businesses, even when no EU competitors exist. These fees have a trendency to reduce economic activity within the EU and prevent cheaper alterantives from outside of the EU being effective as they end up becoming a similar prices or more expensive when the customs fees are applied (despite trying to pass on the savings from signficantly lower production/service costs with less gross income than an EU company which results in a similarly priced product that the customer sees).
Even with a worse trade deal than the EU, the UK can stand to benefit because it won't be required to tack expensive fees on top for the purposes of protectionism of industries that may not even be in the UK to begin with.
When I said "reduced economic activity in the EU", I mean as a whole. This is an over simplfiication, but imagine a situation where everything is 20% more expensive than the normal asking price, this leads to less purchases being made as a whole. It doesn't matter if you're purchasing from outside the EU too, because it's still 20% more expensive. The overall economic activity in such an area is simply reduced.
The trade numbers simply are the way they are because importing doesn't really reduce the costs either. It should also be noted that exporting products outside of the EU has additional fees that make us less competitive than the alternatives outside of the EU too, so our exports are impacted too.
You mean the European Union negotiates to advantage the Union? Did you know that Scotland doesn't like England having a say in what happens there?
The UK had the benefit of memebership of the EU (the freedoms of goods/services/people) without the hindrance of the Euro on its own monetary policy.
Now people that can't even remember what it was like to be at the end of the British empire think that there was some magical period to go back to. It's pathetic.
One of the biggest exports from the UK is financial services. One of the reasons for that is the EU "passport" given to financial services firms to trade.
The UK is losing that export market. Really really dumb.
> One would think that the EU would be in a better position to get better deals than a single country.
One would think, but the EU has been trying and failing to secure any kind of a trade deal with the US, largely due to Europe's instinctive love of protectionism.
The Brexit promise was that there would be no downsides, that there would still be frictionless trade with the EU (which so much of the UK economy relies on), that nonUK EU citizens in the UK would have to leave, but UK citizens in the EU27 would be able to stay there.
Except that the UK is a small island off the side of the third largest trading bloc in the world. Why would anyone want to negotiate only with the UK?
Why would Japanese companies want to continue to manufacture vehicles in the UK when it will only support its local market?
The UK is a relatively small market, its only advantages were stability (now lost), having the City (a tax haven, with branches in British off-shore locations), and access to the EU.
You've still got the City, but EU finance will move to other capitals.
