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Originally Posted by Damien
There is never a mention of the benefits we will and might lose. 50% of our trade is with the EU.
What happens to the car companies that depend on the smooth and tariff-free trade between us and the mainland when their factories are here?
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Less than 50%, and dropping - despite 40 years of policies explicitly designed to reorientate our trading patterns away from the world as a whole and inwards towards Europe. And we have a trade deficit with the EU - they sell more to us than we sell to them. To assume that there will be punitive tariffs for UK exporters is to fly in the face of common sense. The EU stands to lose a lot more than we do out of a tariff war.
And let's not forget, more Euro-denominated financial dealings take place in London -I.e. outside of the Eurozone - than in all the rest of the EU combined. Which leads neatly on to ...
Hezza is merely regurgitating all the same scare stories that were put about by those that wanted us to join the Euro. We didn't join the Euro. The world didn't end. The British economy didn't end. In fact, now the Euro has landed hard on its rear end, the British economy is doing rather better than comparable Eurozone economies like Spain and Italy, which are crippled and facing endemic unemployment, despite having balance sheets which on paper are healthier than ours, because the Spanish and Italian governments have surrendered control of the policy controls necessary to sort the problem out for themselves.
In the long run, lack of autonomous economic control is a far bigger disadvantage for a nation state than any of the supposed short-term advantages of having an unelected politburo in Belgium arranging affairs for you.