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Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

Realistically the UK is shaping up for no deal. Highly appealing to Rees Mogg and his tax haven based hedge fund, not so good for everyone else.

No deal will mean life goes on with tariffs on many goods in either direction. As we have seen over the last two years the Foreign Office has seemingly lost everyone who has diplomatic ability. Funny, they used to be famously good at it. This is not promising for the chances of equitable trade agreements with anyone after Brexit. Life will go on but it appears it'll be a damn sight more expensive.

If the next govt wants to renegotiate re-entry to the EU the terms will be much less appealing than first time around.

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It's not so much the tariffs as the customs clearance per se. Everyone seems to have forgotten that transporting goods across a border has VAT implications, and if you don't check and aren't part of the same VAT area there's a huge opportunity for "carousel fraud".

And the UK is absolutely not set up to cope with customs checks on every vehicle crossing the Channel. See "operation stack".

Oh, and all our international air travel agreements are part of EU membership. Unless something is agreed planes will be grounded.

>It's not so much the tariffs as the customs clearance per se. Everyone seems to have forgotten that transporting goods across a border has VAT implications, and if you don't check and aren't part of the same VAT area there's a huge opportunity for "carousel fraud".

That would give the EU reason to block imports from the UK. It doesn't give much of a reason for the UK to block imports from the EU. So there's no reason to expect that the UK will starve or Amazon will shut down. The only way for that to happen is for the UK to shoot themselves in the foot (again).

Exports, of course, are a whole different story and that's where the risk lies. General economic damage from increased friction in exporting to the EU.

Even if the UK decides to accept fraud and have a customs-free border, shipping is bi-directional; once the tailbacks start, lorries start parking up on the M20. Drivers are going to be reluctant to cross the channel if they can't get back again in a timely fashion.

(Are EU truck licenses valid in the UK after Brexit? And vice versa? Who knows?)

The issues you mentioned are relatively minor. Drivers will still cross if they are paid enough. The UK can easily recognize EU truck licenses on their own. Undoubtably Brexit will cause some disruption to UK/EU trade, but it's pretty far fetched that it will completely break down.

They have to get through customs and multi-mile stacks on the M20 even when empty returning from a delivery. If half a EU company's drivers are stuck in the UK for a day or week longer than intended the chaos will quickly spread far beyond just affecting UK exports only.

Given modern approaches to warehousing and logistics (see how quickly KFC completely fell apart when changing chicken supplier recently) there will be shortages and probably issues with fresh produce. If there are some shortages, any shortages, panic buying and last minute stockpiling will commence. Then there will soon be real shortages.

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