In words now coming back to haunt him, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson once said that negotiations with the European Union on the terms of Britain’s departure from the bloc would let Britain have its cake and eat it too. The United Kingdom, he insisted, would walk away with a trade deal that preserved unfettered access to the continent’s market of 450 million consumers, while freeing the U.K. from pesky European rules, regulations, and standards. The only problem is that EU negotiators don’t seem to want to give away their half of the cake. As talks remain deadlocked and a hard deadline of Jan. 1, 2021, is fast approaching for Britain to crash out of the EU, the rest of the world should be rooting for Europe to hold on to its share.
It is easy to dismiss the too long-running Brexit show as an internal European affair—of deep interest to companies doing business there, of slightly less interest to European citizens, and of little consequence to anyone else. That would be a mistake. For one, there will be short-term economic costs—and if Britain has a hard exit with no new trade rules in place, it could send shock waves around the globe. The British economy is expected to shrink by 4 percent over the next decade, and there will likely be massive short-term disruptions in trucking and air freight, possibly leading to widespread shortages.
