Surely the Economist (a Brit publication if there ever was one) seems pretty clueless. They ran a 4 page piece in the current issue about "no-deal" Brexit. The deal that Theras May has gotten thru her cabinet and was approved by the EU according to this morning's Wall St Journal, was a pretty mild Brexit. Britain would retain her current membership in the EU customs union, which I think means she retains duty free access to the rest of Continent. She would have to abide by a lot of EU regulations about labeling and lead free solder and safety and radio frequency emissions and the like, she would have to pay up some $50 billion of previous committments, and a lot of other stuff. She get to keep duty free entrance to the EU. The Economist is all in favor. A lot, nobody knows just how many, members of parliament don't like it, they think it is Remain disguised as Brexit.
Numbers I have seen show 30% of Britain's economy is exports to the EU. If all those British exports have to pay the going EU tariff of 10%, a lot of that business would go to continental suppliers. The Economist dosn't talk about this at all.
They do kvetch about Parliament rejecting the Theresa May deal in favor of a "no deal" Brexit. They wrote about all sorts of unlikely problems, like banning of air service to the continent, problems with electric power exports or imports, a Northern Ireland customs border, lotta other stuff, all of which seemed sorta second rate to me. The Economist piece never talked about the effect of 10% EU tariffs on British exports to the continent, which to my way of thinking is the major problem with the "no-deal" option of Brexit.
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