EU? The guy was talking about texas, california and ny.
> So hard borders all around, no trade deals in place, nothing.
So they'll just negotiate trade deals?
> It would be like a no-deal Brexit, but infinitely worse.
You gave no reason why it would be worse. Also, post brexit, are you saying britain will never trade with anyone? How did britain trade with anyone before the EU was created?
If two groups of people can live under the same laws, they usually should. Otherwise the legal and regulatory differences impose a 'tax' on every single transaction. California would gain nothing and instead lose an awful lot if it split from the rest of the US.
The UK is a bit of a special case because it's already done an awful lot of work on political devolution. Devolution is a process, not an event, and there's really no reason to make it an event. Dozens of former British colonies quietly and peacefully devolved from the UK and while it's conceivable that California could do the same, the US was practically engineered in order to make it legally impossible. It would require a constitutional amendment at the very least.
I'm not saying it's worthwhile, but I don't think California would gain nothing. California is a net payer to the federal government, so there would be some amount of surplus. California would be able to fully legalize marijuana, and have some other autonomy gains. Required duplication of federal efforts would of course reduce some of the surplus. Continued access to water from the Colorado river would be a major issue, I'm sure. California already pays a tax on every transaction, whether that's from California emissions requirements, or California prop 65 warning stickers on everything (I fully expect to see one on drivers licenses at some point).
California ports process a large majority of the west coast shipping [1], and California produces (and imports) a large amount of food for the nation; the US has a lot to lose if it doesn't negotiate a good trade deal. There's certainly some room for port expansion in the Pacific Northwest, as well as diversion to gulf and east coast ports.
Customs is far less onerous than security. Passport control is a pain, but that's easily solved. Germany and France have no such borders, yet are independent countries.
An independent Catalan that's signed up to schengen, the single market, the customs union, etc. would be fine, it just devolves some power from Madrid to Barcelona.
Likewise there is no technical reason that an independent California couldn't join a schengen style passport agreement, customs union, and free trade area, with the rest of the US. Canada could join such an agreement too. It's all doable.
Other than the fact that the United States would never create such a thing (or, if it did, would never allow a recently exited US state to join it), specifically to prevent encouraging balkanization of the US.
But sure, they can and will negotiate trade deals. Ten years later they might have two or three, with not too important countries.
The US, for example, won't feel a huge need to prioritize a trade deal with Catalonia "right now". That would be on the back burner, and somewhen much later it might be finished and ratified.