Brexit Common Sense

Much has been written about Brexit, the process by which the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, both pro and con. I’ve been reading widely and mostly not agreeing with what I read, finding it either “sky is falling” panic or “political gridlock” fear-mongering.

RealClearPolitics has an article by two private sector economists who write what I’ve been thinking, that just leaving - so-called ‘hard Brexit” - is not a recipe for disaster. Among other points, they write:

It's not like there would be no trade between the U.K. and the EU after a Hard Brexit. Trade rules would simply shift to the ones that apply between the EU and other countries under the World Trade Organization, like those that apply to EU-U.S. trade or between the EU and China or Japan.

But the EU would be under enormous pressure to lower tariffs and cut a new deal with the U.K. In 2017, the rest of the European Union ran a roughly $90 billion trade surplus with the U.K. So if a Hard Brexit makes it tougher for the rest of the EU to export to the U.K., every national capital in the EU would be flooded with lobbyists asking to cut a deal.

Their point - the EU has more to lose than the U.K. if trade between the two goes south, so that won’t happen. “$90 billion trade surplus” isn’t chump change, I find the authors’ reasoning persuasive. Sadly, that doesn’t mean the British public will agree.