4 ms·

Wasn't import taxes an inevitability as a result of brexit? The free movement of goods and people is a fundamental part of EU and EEA and once you are no longer

by Y-bar 4y ago

Wasn't import taxes an inevitability as a result of brexit? The free movement of goods and people is a fundamental part of EU and EEA and once you are no longer part of it you no longer have those freedoms and instead have the normal external EU/EEA costs?

riffraff 4y ago
no, they were not, Turkey and Switzerland are not in the EU nor in EEA, but they can sell (some) of their goods to EU countries with no taxes due to specific agreements. UK explicitly chose to avoid such arrangements.
- drooopy 4y ago
  Turkey, Switzerland, and/or even russia (pre-Ukraine war) are part of the EU Customs Union that the UK chose to stay out of.
  - riffraff 4y ago
    not switzerland, and I have no idea why you think Russia was ever part of the EU customs union. But the point is that staying out of the customs union was not an "inevitabile result of leaving the EU", it was a choice separated from it.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  The UK didn't choose to avoid such arrangements and requested many times for a comprehensive free trade deal. The problem is that the EU considers arrangements such as those with the Swiss to be legacy, deprecated and no longer on offer. They have also spent a lot of time pressuring Switzerland in various ways to try and force it to become a de-facto member-without-membership. They don't want any country in Europe to have any option other than membership, whereby membership means full control from Brussels without local elections having any meaningful outcomes. That is their goal and doing a trade deal with the UK would have undermined that.
fidgewidge 4y ago
No, the EU could choose to simply not levy such tariffs. They have signed free trade deals with other countries before that don't require membership, they simply refuse to do that for any country geographically in Europe. They do this even though tariffs hurt people in EU countries (they are taxes on Europeans remember), because refusing to compromise or negotiate - insisting that everything comes as a single package with no flexibility whatsoever - and then using trade as a weapon to enforce this, is how the EU establishes its power over member states. As a strategy it works well - look at the people in this thread. They are brainwashed into believing the EU position is immutable and inevitable, like a law of physics or something. Wrong. They can set tariffs to whatever they like. There is no specific reason trade barriers must be linked to who the supreme court is, or immigration policy, or any of the other thousand things that the EU makes contingent on them. When the EU does this it is purely about power. Some people are upset and blame Leave campaigners for not making this clear enough. They say, how could tell us the EU would ever compromise on anything? The reason is that many Leave campaigners wanted to be diplomatic and not upset people in Europe any more than necessary, especially as some might end up in the government afterwards, as indeed happened. Spelling out the truth to people is deeply unpleasant. It means telling people that the EU is a fanatical organization that never negotiates with Europeans, these days it is only willing to dictate. Of course the above was obvious all along. I voted for Brexit knowing full well it would mean the UK was out of the single market along with everything else, and predicting quite possibly a sort of unofficial cold war between the two sides. The people who performatively exclaim that the population were misled are talking nonsense. It was clear to anyone whose eyes were clear of ideology or diplomatic constraints how the EU would react, because it is a union held together by aggression and fear. If they tried to establish cooperation on everything possible without the take-it-or-leave-it approach, that fear would evaporate and many other countries would head for the exits.

by Y-bar 4y ago

riffraff 4y ago

no, they were not, Turkey and Switzerland are not in the EU nor in EEA, but they can sell (some) of their goods to EU countries with no taxes due to specific agreements. UK explicitly chose to avoid such arrangements.

drooopy 4y ago
Turkey, Switzerland, and/or even russia (pre-Ukraine war) are part of the EU Customs Union that the UK chose to stay out of.
- riffraff 4y ago
  not switzerland, and I have no idea why you think Russia was ever part of the EU customs union. But the point is that staying out of the customs union was not an "inevitabile result of leaving the EU", it was a choice separated from it.
fidgewidge 4y ago
The UK didn't choose to avoid such arrangements and requested many times for a comprehensive free trade deal. The problem is that the EU considers arrangements such as those with the Swiss to be legacy, deprecated and no longer on offer. They have also spent a lot of time pressuring Switzerland in various ways to try and force it to become a de-facto member-without-membership. They don't want any country in Europe to have any option other than membership, whereby membership means full control from Brussels without local elections having any meaningful outcomes. That is their goal and doing a trade deal with the UK would have undermined that.

fidgewidge 4y ago

No, the EU could choose to simply not levy such tariffs. They have signed free trade deals with other countries before that don't require membership, they simply refuse to do that for any country geographically in Europe. They do this even though tariffs hurt people in EU countries (they are taxes on Europeans remember), because refusing to compromise or negotiate - insisting that everything comes as a single package with no flexibility whatsoever - and then using trade as a weapon to enforce this, is how the EU establishes its power over member states. As a strategy it works well - look at the people in this thread. They are brainwashed into believing the EU position is immutable and inevitable, like a law of physics or something. Wrong. They can set tariffs to whatever they like. There is no specific reason trade barriers must be linked to who the supreme court is, or immigration policy, or any of the other thousand things that the EU makes contingent on them. When the EU does this it is purely about power. Some people are upset and blame Leave campaigners for not making this clear enough. They say, how could tell us the EU would ever compromise on anything? The reason is that many Leave campaigners wanted to be diplomatic and not upset people in Europe any more than necessary, especially as some might end up in the government afterwards, as indeed happened. Spelling out the truth to people is deeply unpleasant. It means telling people that the EU is a fanatical organization that never negotiates with Europeans, these days it is only willing to dictate. Of course the above was obvious all along. I voted for Brexit knowing full well it would mean the UK was out of the single market along with everything else, and predicting quite possibly a sort of unofficial cold war between the two sides. The people who performatively exclaim that the population were misled are talking nonsense. It was clear to anyone whose eyes were clear of ideology or diplomatic constraints how the EU would react, because it is a union held together by aggression and fear. If they tried to establish cooperation on everything possible without the take-it-or-leave-it approach, that fear would evaporate and many other countries would head for the exits.