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25 January 2019

Bloomberg: It’s a cruel world for UK companies weighing no-deal Brexit


Britain needs to replicate more than 30 trade deals with countries around the world and time is running out.

[...]While the focus has been on trade with the EU, the problem is that what’s become known as a “no-deal Brexit” might be just as bad for companies doing business with other parts of world. And executives and policy makers say there’s little they can do to prepare.

Politicians in London are seemingly at an intractable impasse, and the U.K.’s failure to guarantee free-trade agreements with countries like South Korea, Turkey and Norway has left exporters and importers concerned they too will be cut adrift. About 11 percent of Britain’s trade is currently covered by deals struck by the EU for its member states, ones the U.K. will have to replicate to maintain unencumbered exports and imports to and from more than 30 countries .

After more than two years of limbo, Britain is confronting the prospect of customs barriers leading to shortages of everything from medical supplies to manufacturing components. Liam Fox, the minister in charge of international trade, said this month that the major deals would be rolled over before leaving the EU on March 29, but others wouldn’t. [...]

Bloomberg Economics’s Dan Hanson estimates a free-trade agreement with the U.S. would make up less than 15 percent of the economic hit to Britain from a no-deal Brexit. Accords with a group of countries from the old British Empire, including Canada, would make up only about 13 percent. [...]

Full article on Bloomberg



© Bloomberg


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