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Comment by UK-AL | Hacker News Reader

Out of spite? Refusing to neogiate decent trade deals would mean tons of job losses for Germany and France.

I saw a independent study about the possible global impacts of a Brexit and in the ranking there are more than 10 countries where the impact is more severe than that for a Germany and France.

Second the world exists out of more goods than champagne, cheese and cars... . I see you make a big deal about German cars but in the whole scheme of things that is really small. And I dare to ask if a lot of British people will be still able to buy those cars to begin with, as I see how the pound is falling fast.

And third you are dealing with the EU that exists out more countries than Germany and France. Yes, because of their size they have a big position but please let stop that intellectual dishonest narrative that all other countries are living under some-kind of French-German dictatorship where they don't have any saying.

Do you have the link to this independent study?

But even worse losses in the UK, a fact that every other negotiating partner knows. The rest of the EU has all the leverage.

Not really. Because it will be tit for tat strategy.

In order to not get job losses, both have to cooperate

You can bet that the big EU countries (Germany and France especially) are going to play hardball to make an example of someone who dares to quit the EU.

Think that would politically difficult at the cost of many of jobs.

Not really. German politicians can just play up the betrayal card - UK leaving means the Germans are now left holding the bag even more for the EU. Germany has a strong economy and this will not affect its fundamentals that much.

Except the German economy is driven by cars. We import 1/5 of all German cars.

Have fun paying import tax on those. Maybe it'll be a good thing for UK car manufacturers. Although I'm struggling to name any.

Then German car sales will fall, and workers will be fired?

Have you ever been in a modern German car factory? Nowadays there are huge buildings, spotlessly clean with tons of robots assembling cars.

Occasionally you see someone sitting around reading the newspaper and drinking coffee, ready to jump into action should something go wrong. The times where the industry consisted of huge factories filled with blue collar workers assembling cars by hand is long over.

The industry has two years to focus on other markets to export to. There might be some impact but it won't be catastrophic or lead to massive job loss.

They might accept some job loss if this stops other countries to go out too. That would affect jobs more.

I would hope they wouldn't do it out of pure, personal spite, but I suspect there will be a lot of interest in discouraging other countries from leaving the EU. Not saying this is right or wrong, but it is not a completely unreasonable expectation.

That would cost them tons of jobs to do that.

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