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 simpl

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.