If Britain votes for Brexit, Britain will slide into the North Sea, a pandemic of some sort will plague the world, and the sun will go dark, extinguishing life on earth. Well, maybe not, but a variety of scary consequences have been predicted by the usual fear peddlers. From Frank Hollenbeck at mises.org:
The United Kingdom will on Thursday vote either to leave or remain in the European Union. This is the most important European event of this century since it will likely have important domino effects for the rest of Europe.
A recent poll showed that if the UK could keep free trade with EU nations, the British people would vote overwhelmingly to leave the EU. To drum up support for staying in the EU, the UK government and quasi-government agencies, like the IMF and OECD, have issued continuous warnings about the costs of such a divorce. The IMF recently reiterated its forecasts that Brexit would have a significant negative effect on the UK economy with a drop in GDP anywhere between 1% and 9% over the long term.
The reality is that Brexit would probably only have a minor initial impact on trade or GDP and, on the contrary, would open up vast possibilities for the UK to exploit trade relations with other faster growing regions of the world without having to reach complex trade agreements that satisfy the vested interests of the other 28 members of the EU.
The impact of Brexit on trade has been grossly exaggerated. In today’s world, a product has parts coming from all over the world. A BMW is only called German because of historical association. In reality, the steel in a BMW may come from Brazil or China, the upholstery from the UK, the engine from France, and the electronics from the USA. Labor costs are only 10% of a car and some may even be foreign labor. Also, profits are distributed to BMW shareholders and bondholders which are more likely to be sent to a hedge fund in Japan than to the mechanic in Dusseldorf. The world is massively economically integrated. Relatively free trade and free movement of capital is no longer an option for most countries, whether it is the UK or any of the other countries in the EU. That boat sailed years ago!
Trade restrictions and capital controls are no longer a countries’ choice: either you participate in the world economy or accept living standards equivalent to that of North Korea or Venezuela. So the issue is NOT whether the UK will continue to trade mostly freely with the EU: it will, because today there is no other choice: and the same is true for the other countries of the EU. Despite French threats of a bloody Brexit, Germany, which runs its second largest bilateral trade surplus with the UK, has little interest in starting a trade war, nor do most of the private interests in the rest of Europe.
If the UK government is really concerned about trade, it has the power to significantly increase both its exports and living standards. It only has to remove any impediments to imports. We must never forget that imports are intractably linked to exports. What is true of the individual is also true for a nation. The ability to buy (foreign purchase of UK exports) is linked to the ability to sell (UK purchases of imports).
To continue reading: Britain Doesn’t Need the EU to Thrive
