[matthewmacleod]

A rather large number of companies have discovered suddenly that the overhead of exporting to the EU from a third-country position makes it far less effective to make direct sales to EU countries. This seems pretty obvious if you're familiar with the structure of international trade – but many businesses don't have expertise in this area.

One of the major goals of the EU is the reduction of this red tape, but the UK government spent a lot of time making a political argument about how everything would still be fine. Businesses obviously had to work with that advice. Now that the barriers are there and real, it's been a bit of a shock. This is particularly true for sectors like food products, which now require health and biosecurity checks (which are expensive!).

One of approaches to compensate for this to some extent is to ship products in bulk to distribution centres or similar facilities within the EU – this reduces the per-shipment overhead. But obviously this means you move staff and investment to the EU, and the UK loses out on employment and tax revenue.

The whole thing means it just becomes much less attractive to import from, and export to, the EU. That translates in the long term to a dark on the UK economy. Baffling as an economic decision, but politics seems to defy practicality in the UK these days.

[dgellow]

Sounds like a great advertising campaign for the EU. In the future we may be able to point to the Brexit disaster as a reason to join and not leave.

[benhurmarcel]

Brexit has already gotten an effect on Eurosceptic movements within the rest of the union. They're not as strong, and the parties associated with it aren't as vocal about it anymore.

[arcturus17]

Well, many people already warned about this, but Brexiters retorted with two arguments:

(1) The lack of EU regulation would allow the UK to negotiate its own trade deals with non-EU countries, potentially making up the loss of trade with the EU

(2) The lack of red tape would also allow the UK to become find new efficiencies in the production of goods and services

The UK is a resourceful country so in the long run they will make up for some of the loss, but I doubt they will ever reach the same trade potential as if they had stayed in the EU. What's clear is that the short term looks dire for a lot of businesses.

[jlokier]

> The lack of red tape would also allow the UK...

The irony being that red tape has gone way up due to Brexit, not down, and this was obviously going to happen to anyone with even small amounts of experience with international trade.

Things have become so much more expensive and difficult that some businesses are shutting down due to non-viability, some EU businesses have decided they can no longer ship to the UK (not worth the hassle), and UK businesses have decided they can no longer ship to EU countries.

There was one company I saw recently that now ships products to every country in the world except the UK, because the UK is currently more difficult to deal with than random third countries.

[radicalbyte]

I'm British and living in The Netherlands.

The British - like the Germans - are good at doing. They're going to have a really hard time for the next decade but they'll pull themselves out of the slump.

The Dutch - they are more "managerial", the culture involves spending a huge amount of time talking and very little doing. Our PM is a great example - he's an identikit guy in a suit, who ticks all of the boxes. Even as far as keeping the parts of his life which do not confirm to standard quiet. No vision, manages like a soft MBA, mediocre. Looks a saint compared to Johnson or Trump. The previous guy was the same.

Just compare our vaccination efforts to those of the UK or Germany. Miles behind. We're probably still discussing the ethical ramifications and impact of the human rights of the tiny subgroup of people who will reject the vaccination for hipster*/religious reasons

* Management culture, so you have an army of dummies who study something easy at university so they can get a career in middle management, drinking coffee and reading/sharing pseudo science on Facebook.

[jackjeff]

I’m sure these business owners would have like to know about these changes with more than two weeks notice during the Christmas holidays.

It’s not easy to move staff. UK citizens need to secure a Visa to work in the EU. This is the kind of move that requires months of planning.

It was not a “given” the situation would end up like that. For instance if the UK was allowed to collect VAT on behalf of the EU you could imagine the experience of the average “shopper” to be somewhat better.