UK to leave EU

GPR - Rochester wrote: What I do not understand is the great pessimism of the remain voters about our ability to trade. We do not have any trade agreement with the US but they are our biggest customer by far. What is to stop us having the same relationship individually with each of the 27 EU countries that we have with the US? Our relationship with the US does not involve paying billions for the priveledge nor indeed opening our borders to free movement. This is a genuine question - I would be interested to know the remain supporters' response. Does anyone truly believe, for instance, that BMW & Mercedes would be happy to sit idly by if the UK were to respond to a negative duty charge on UK business with one of our own on car imports from Germany?

Nothing at all - although any trading relationship has to be with the EU as a whole, obviously, and not with the 27 individual countries who would still be bound by the EU treaty.  The EU does not at the moment have a trade agreement with the U.S., so any trade with the U.S. is, I guess, subject to standard WTO rules, though the UK will need to (re)join the WTO as a separate nation, and I don't know what that involves.  The EU and the US are in the process of agreeing a better-than-WTO deal, but it is controversial and is currently bogged down.  The U.S. is unlikely to want to agree a separate deal with UK until is has one with the EU, unless the EU pisses the U.S. off.

Trading within the EU is free from tariff, and hopefully the UK and EU will negotiate a tariff-free agreement covering things like cars, but it's important to the EU that the UK doesn't achieve a beneficial trade arrangement compared with what it has now, for obvious reasons.

However, international trade can involve, I imagine, a lot of additional administrative details regarding standards etc, and you have to admit that Norway (for example) would be stupid to pay what it does to trade with the EU if you can get the same benefits without.

GPR - Rochester wrote: Norway may need the EU far more than we do. Stupid is one word to use another is naive. I would sincerely hope that the UK negotiators have a far stronger bargaining position that Norway ever had. I would guess that Norways trade with the EU amounts to a far greater % of their overall than the UK.  Lets face it there is a huge global economy out there & we are open for business. As the 6th largest economy in the World we do have some clout.

Could be. They certainly have a massive trade surplus with the EU, but they're also much richer than us, so they can afford it.

So much for the Chancellors pre-Brexit doomsday economic scenario. Our top companies, who also mostly agreed with the Chancellor's doom ridden forecast, have seen their share values increase rapidly over the past 6 weeks. The truth, as most of us realised, was that no-one can predict the markets & that George Osbourne's prediction that we would all be £4300 per year worse off was total & utter bullpoo.

Hear hear a voice of sense. Sentiments which I totally agree with. However our George & I quote " a vote to leave will wipe billions off the stock market" has proven to be way off the mark. The fact as of today is that billions have been added to the stock market. How can anyone have any faith in his predictions? I have stated all along that no-one can predict with any degree of certainty how the economy will react to differing scenarios. The only thing which I am prepared to accept is that our gross payment of £350 million per week will eventually disappear - that is fact. In the fullness of time we will see the economy reacting to events as the two year process of removing ourselves from the EU comes about. 

The FTSE 100 recovered quite quickly, but that's the one that includes the really big global companies like BP whose income is more likely to be in US dollars.  Major exporting companies will also prosper from the weakened pound, and hopefully (some of) the FTSE 250 companies are starting to see these benefits

Since nothing about our economy has actually changed yet - and won't for years - what we're seeing now is the effects of market projections about the potentially lethal combination of a potential reduction in inward investment and increased balance of payments deficit.  Until the new deal with the EU is worked out AND the UK has formally left the EU, no other country can (or would) negotiate a new trade deal with us.  Meanwhile foreign investors will tend to delay investment in the UK or switch it to other EU countries.  Nissan is likely, for example, to switch production of new models to its EU factories, and hold off on further investment in the UK until it all settles down.

Still - so far, so good.