dpedin wrote: Sat Apr 05, 2025 8:15 am
Yeeb wrote: Fri Apr 04, 2025 11:30 am
dpedin wrote: Fri Apr 04, 2025 9:47 am
Woah dont get your nickers into a twist! I wasn't comparing the whole of Brexit v US imposing tariffs debacles but merely comparing the impact of one country imposing economically damaging barriers to trade and thinking the impact is the same for both sides! In Brexit we came out of the EU and as a consequence lost our favourable trading arrangements with out biggest export market, whereas the EU countries lost one, and in most cases not by any means their biggest, market. The UK economy is now widely agreed to take a 4% hit on GDP. The US have done the same in implementing these tariffs and increased the cost of every single import into their market stoking inflation, disrupting supply chains and their own manufacturing, slowing down the economy, etc. Yes other countries will take a hit but for many ie the UK, the US isnt their biggest market - as I said earlier it is 17% of UK exports and mostly on a small range of specialist goods, luxury cars, whisky, etc. The parallels between the economic bullshit claims spouted about Brexit and Trumps tariffs are very strong and both ignore the basic maths that they take a 100% hit for their actions whereas all the other countries ie the EU or the World, take a proportionally smaller hit to their economy!
The US have gambled that the rest of the world will fold, in much the same way Brexiteers said the EU couldn't do without the UK and we could/would continue to have unfettered access to the EU, goods would flow West-East to Northern Ireland without any barriers, etc. That went really well and our imports and exports with the EU are down post Brexit and as the OBR points put there is little evidence that trade from elsewhere has managed to plug the gap! If China, Canada, EU, etc dont fold to Trumps demands then the economic damage to the US of the tariff barriers will be huge and be felt very quick! At least with Brexit we had a transition period and planned, albeit very very badly for the transition. It could be a significant hit, comparable to the Brexit impact on UK GDP but within the year. It will be interesting to see who folds first but my money is on Trump having to fold but trying to cloak it up as some form of crappy success!
Uk didn’t impose extra tariffs though , the remaining EU did, as at the time didn’t need any UK money, military capacity or world influence.
Remains to be seen how Trump lunacy pans out for world trade , right now uk has gained a bit comparatively
EU didnt impose tariffs on the UK ... we asked them to! The UK decided leave the club, to step out of the EU, SM and CU and therefore chose to become a '3rd country' in the eyes of the EU and be subject to all the rules and regulations that brings with it, many of which were designed and voted for by the UK when we were a member. We, by voting for Brexit, decided to impose all the various financial and non financial barriers to trade with the EU upon ourselves. We knew what the consequences were, it was just that many decided to ignore the realities and decided self delusion was a better option than cold hard economics. TO make matters worse we left without a proper deal to help minimize the impact of leaving and ever since we left we have been trying hard to minimize the self harm through things like the TCA but that does require us to become a rule taker rather than a rule maker in areas such as agriculture, etc. As with the US tariffs and the rest of the world, Brexit was a decision to create additional barriers to trade with our biggest, closest and most important markets. Putting aside all the bullshit about Sovrenty etc from a purely economic and trading basis it was taking a shotgun to one of not both our knees!
You seem to casually forgot things like Ursula & her ‘real teeth’ speech, the EV tariffs saga, the French PM requests, how EU treated say Switzerland …
FWIW I don’t blame EU at all for the actions post brexit and trying to set an example , but to somehow say the uk requested the tariffs is a bit warped. Another somewhat major difference is that Brexit was (in theory) done for political reasons not economic, and trumps tariffs bonanza done for economic reasons. But yeah, apart from all those differences , it’s exactly the same …..