Ralph Winnie, Jr. interview with Sputnik News regarding impact of Brexit

'Many Uncertainties': Analysts Explain What Future Holds for UK After Brexit

 

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United Kingdom’s only recourse for avoiding an economic crisis from a hasty Brexit is to strike bilateral trade deals with key states such as the United States, China and Russia at once to facilitate a gradual pull out, analysts told Sputnik.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump told the Sun newspaper that if UK Prime Minister Theresa May goes forward with her "soft" Brexit proposal it would likely kill any prospects for a bilateral trade agreement with the United States. The comments come ahead of Trump’s meeting with May in London on Friday and in the wake of a ministerial exodus driven by disagreements over the prime minister’s plan.

© AFP 2018 / JUSTIN TALLIS

BREXITING
May’s so-called "soft" Brexit plan — which sees the United Kingdom staying in the EU Customs Union under a facilitated arrangement — has been derided by the "hard" Brexiteers who envisioned a clean break. Earlier this week, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit secretary David Davis resigned over May’s compromise proposal for withdrawing from the EU.

Eurasian Business Coalition Vice President Ralph Winnie told Sputnik the UK needed to make major trade agreements with leading global powers.
The final pattern of such agreements could not be determined in advance but the UK government had to move decisively and systematically towards achieving them, Winnie advised.
"There are so many uncertainties in law and in the future patterns of international trade. The British have got to move one step at a time on this," he said.

 "The British people themselves are divided and confused. They are uncertain as to what it all means: So many of them have grown up as part of the EU. They don’t remember what life was like before it," Winnie noted.

TO STAY OR GO
Retired Brown University Assistant Professor of Economics Barry Friedman told Sputnik the British people had voted to gamble on Brexit exchanging their secure position within the EU for the freedom to set their own limits on immigration and trade.
After Brexit the UK would be free of the EU value-added tax system, Friedman added.

Those developments could reduce the UK’s domestic GDP, Friedman remarked.
"Other local companies will be glad to see the competitors go and may expand production or raise their prices or both," he said.
US President Donald Trump is scheduled to discuss US-UK future trade relations after Brexit in their talks on Friday, according to the Prime Minister’s Office in Downing Street, London.

The Brexit negotiations between London and the European Union started last year and are due to be completed by the end of March 2019. A model of the future economic partnership between the sides has proven to be one of the most contentious matters both in Brexit talks with Brussels and debates within the United Kingdom, as the recent high-profile resignations in the UK government showed.

The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in a referendum in 2016, but the vote left the country divided almost equally into "Remainers" and "Brexiteers."