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> The UK imports a lot of food from EU neighbors. In case of a hard Brexit, this will just ... stop.

A hard Brexit doesn't mean the EU will impose an embargo on the UK. The EU now happily exports food to WTO members outside the EU, and doesn't impose export tolls or restrictions on those that I'm aware of.

Of course the UK might impose its own tolls, quotas and other import restrictions after crashing out of the EU, but that'll be its own doing.

Edit (since OP updated): It seems implausible that the government would make that self-imposed process onerous enough to result in a literal famine. Which goes to the heart of what you've misunderstood here.

This "chaos at the border" refers to chaos for UK companies trying to export things due to customs requirements the EU has, whereas the UK's hypothetical inability to import something would be due to a purely self-imposed post-EU customs process.

In order to get their VAT back, exporters from the EU also need to get their papers checked against the actual goods and stamped. This takes hours for every truck.

That is irrespective of whether the importing country lifts all tariffs.

> https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-rules...

If enough trucks with TVs and car parts clog the borders, then the food-trucks (who might get some sort of special treatment) are also clogged. They will be clogged 50 miles before they reach the border.

But of course. I have also heard people seriously suggest that the UK will cease to uphold any human rights without the EU. As somebody who lives outside the EU and still somehow has human rights, I expect this is also an exaggeration...

While I am highly skeptical of the Brexit I don't think any kind of collapse will happen.

"Our western societies are very efficient but also very fragile. If supermarkets can no longer fill up their shelves, people go hungry fast. If supermarkets can only fill 80% of shelves, people panic and start hoarding food. Those who are too late to the party go hungry. With enough people hungry for a few days, society collapses."

This is still true. I think most people have no idea how fragile our societies are. Still remember as a child in Germany how people made fun of old people hoarding food. Really uncool to hoard food. You know what is more uncool than hording food? Having nothing to eat. African countries or even countries like Ukraine may be much less fragile to disruptions of supply chains. But in industrialized countries, a few weeks of supply chain disruptions can lead to melt down of societies. The single households in cities likely have food for 2 or 3 days.

Corpses in the street?

The UK imports around 25% of food-related commodities from the EU. Even with no deal, these imports will continue (as the EU has to sell them to someone.) Even if the EU stopped, there would not be corpses in the street as there happens to be a very wealthy English-speaking country not too far away that happens to produce more food than any country on the planet and is more than willing to trade with the UK.

> The US is currently only the 10th largest exporter of food to the UK. “For the USA to replace the combined food imports from the other nine in the top 10 would require a vast food flotilla and logistics operation exceeding that of the 1940-45 Atlantic convoys.”

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/15/food-and-brexit...

Damn that's crazy so it's completely viable? With the increasing in ships and logistical systems it would be even easier then it was back in the day.

It's viable in the long term. It cannot be set up inside a week.

I think you missed the point. The point is that 1) overnight disruption of existing supply chains is very likely, and 2) in today's last-minute food supply infrastructure, it only takes a few days for shelves to empty. Empty shelves = hungry people = riots.

So it's not a question of whether the US will trade with the UK, in the long run. It's a question of whether, 2 days after a hard Brexit, everyone has been well-organized enough to keep food flowing across the border at the same rate as always, despite the massive customs upheaval.

Think this through. If there is a hard Brexit, the only hinderance to goods coming INTO the UK is the UK. Do you really think the UK will stop or hinder food imports to such an extent that there are "empty shelves" and "riots"?

The economic concern of a hard Brexit isn't the imports, but the exports. There might be significant economic disruption if the EU slows down trade of items coming INTO the EU and OUT OF the UK. But, the UK is solely in control of how smoothly goods coming INTO the UK and OUT OF the EU get distributed.

Lots of faces cut of their own noses.

Have you worked with bureaucrats? They won't view it as stopping, but rules and paperwork need to be filed. If processes are followed stuff will flow, but there will be a flow stopping shockwave propagating backward at the rate of tps-1c.

The amount of food the UK imports from the EU is irrelevant, the relevant question is how much food does the UK import ?

This is because, as an EU member, the UK has trade agreements with many countries outside of the EU. After a no deal Brexit, it has none. This affects all UK imports and exports.

I think this is a ridiculous claim. Are you saying the UK is going to stop food coming across its border when it is to the clear benefit of it's citizens? That is ridiculous. The UK will suspend ALL customs operations before it does that. The bureaucratic state is kind of broken but not that broken.

Everybody will try to get as much food over the border as possible. Everybody will work together. The EU, the UK, the US, everybody. But this could still go very very bad.

What do you think "chaos at the border" means? Every truck, train and ship has to get the papers checked where they could just drive through before. But there are not enough qualified officers to actually check all the papers.

So goods will come in at a trickle.

This is the UK governments own statement. Chaos at the border for six months:

> Britain’s government has revised its worst-case Brexit scenario estimates for chaos at the country’s borders, which it now expects to last for six months rather than six weeks, the political editor of The Sun newspaper said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-borders/uk-now...

These comments read like some of the best Y2K and peak oil fanfic.

> What do you think “chaos at the border” means?

Probably not the UK self-imposing a famine on its people in favour of establishing a permit Raj. It sounds a lot more like government officials trying to get attention through hyperbole and extra funding for their departments than anything else. There’s nothing stopping the UK from declaring no duties on all imports and liberalizing incoming trade from Europe and elsewhere even more than it is now if it’s in their interests to do so. A lot of trade policy is unilateral when it comes down to it.

I hate when people use Y2K as some sort of evidence of trumped up claims.

Y2K could have been really bad. The reason it wasn’t as bad was because people took the threat seriously and spent nearly the last 5-10 years in the 90s spending billions of dollars, and many millions of man hours preventing the worst case scenarios.

That doesn’t change my point. Regardless of how serious of an issue Y2K actually was, the level of alarmism from armchair observers was still ridiculous, as was the notion that the problems wouldn’t get addressed.

OP literally predicted corpses on the street because of paperwork issues.

> But there are not enough qualified officers to actually check all the papers.

Starve (and therefore internal anarchy) versus upholding a paperwork check?

The papers won't be checked.

This isn't how things play out. The papers will stop being checked after the riots have started. But will continue to be checked when there are just long lines. Bureaucracies react to things that are actually occurring, not things that will occur.

The government has already announced the paperwork checks will be suspended at the start.

Maybe he was referring to the casket business... the EU produces most of the UK's caskets... maybe that's why there would be corpses in the street.

What about the EUs export custom operations? Exporting to the UK is currently intra-EU. Exporting to the UK post-Brexit is ex-EU.

The rules on VAT alone will be enough to clog the ports. Are the trucks covered by insurance if they leave the EU? Are the drivers licenses valid? What about when the trucks return? Are they being re-imported?

It's not the concept of leaving that is the problem, it's all of the "etc".

None of what you are saying is true, and it is clear that you have no idea how trade works.

The EU and the UK already have a trade deal. It is called the World Trade Organization rules.

Yes, some taxes and tariffs might be higher, but it is a complete lie, born of either ignorance or maliciousness, to claim that a country would literally starve to death.

Once again, go look up the WTO trade rules. WTO trade rules cover most of the world.

I don't think "we probably won't even starve to death" would have gone over quite so well on the side of the bus.

There is also the question of how easy unravelling our membership of the WTO with the rest of Europe will be.

I'm no expert in how international trade works but it's not as simple as WTO becomes the default day one no deal situation from what I've read. For example https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-trade-...

> “The thing is, checks on non-EU trucks don’t take a couple of minutes,” Burnett told me. “They can take two or three hours.” Post-Brexit, British trucks would be non-EU. A team from London’s Imperial College subsequently estimated those queues could be 29 miles long at peak times on the British side, and there’s no reason to suppose it wouldn’t be the same on the French.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/15/food-and-brexit...

Days of wait time would prohibit fresh/frozen food to make it to the UK before perishing.