But presumably this is because the UK government doesn't want to import German cheeses.
It seems likely that post-Brexit UK is in full control of how easy it is for things to be imported in to the UK. They don't need a deal with Europe to influence that. Countries have near-unilateral control over imports (although an exception can be made to that principle for military tech).
So this sort of thing is an example of why the UK voters decided to leave - a bit more control over what is entering the country.
The U.K. imports plenty of cheese from Europe. When you are a small business, you have less access to capital and so you tend to need a larger, faster return on investments. Presumably the expense of working out how to ship cheese to the U.K. (or Switzerland) is not worth the expected near term return. A larger cheese maker could afford this investment (and would be in a better position to sell more cheese to eg supermarkets or wholesalers).
Yes exactly. It's absolutly possible to sell to any country in the world, but my point is just that the higher admin barrier and costs that come with Brexit take away an otherwise easily accessible, economically important market such as the UK.
So I personally didn't know that and it is interesting, but it doesn't change my basic perspective. That means the UK can't single out German cheeses if they have the same quality as other cheeses - but that still only means that any issues importing cheeses are created, on purpose, by the UK regulators. Because they explicitly want to control foreign cheeses on their market.
Thread ancestor was pointing out he likes having a big market to sell in to. I sympathise. And I really like the sound of the no-tariff low regulation UK cheese market, I'd vote for that if I were in the UK. But, and this is the focus for me in context of the article, these restriction are fully in the control of the UK and have very little to do with the success and failure of an EU-UK deal. It is simply a basic and well established observation that regulation makes it harder to run a business.
Increases, obviously. If it made it cheaper and easier to run a business there wouldn't need to be a regulator, they would just do it on their own.
The argument in favour of accounting regulations is that the costs imposed are acceptable for the risks to the public of lax accounting practices, not that it reduces costs. Much like how the argument in favour of silly cheese regulations is that protecting the public from the wrong type of mouldy cheese is worth not having shafyy running a cheese operation in the UK.
> But presumably this is because the UK government doesn't want to import German cheeses.
I'm no expert, but I'll go out on a limb and say definitively that no Brexit proponent listed "no German Cheeses" on their manifesto. This is a retconned explanation.
Now, it's true that in principle that nations want some control over imports somewhere. But the point of the post above is that most of the time you don't, and exiting a free trade agreement means that many of those goods suddenly stop being available locally due to simple regulatory friction.
Countries' control over imports is not absolute; they are bound by international treaties (at least in a game-theoretic sense). More specifically, everyone is a WTO member and the WTO sets rules on how countries are allowed to control imports. You are required to grant all WTO members the same level of market access, absent a comprehensive free-trade agreement. This is known as the "most favored nation" rule.
So, the UK can't say they don't want to import German cheese. Once they allow any foreign cheese into their market, the MFN rule means they have to allow all foreign cheese into the market. Likewise, if they wanted to ban German cheese, they'd also have to ban cheeses from everywhere else. The only situation in which they'd be able to allow one country's cheese and not the other is if they had a comprehensive free-trade agreement or a customs union... you know, the exact sort of thing that they just left.
If UK tries to limit what enters, they invite relatiation from what the EU allows to enter.
Anyway based on polling, that's not why (a slim majority of) UK voters voted leave (except for controlling which people can enter, not which cheese). Lies about NHS funding and the like were a larger reason.
shaffy wants to sell to UK customers, his customers want to buy his product. Why should the government get in the way of that. Making that transaction difficult is going to lower economic activity, reduce consumer choice and increase prices.
>So this sort of thing is an example of why the UK voters decided to leave
UK voters voted because of the high levels of immigration. Without that the leave campaign would have lost by a wide margin.
It seems likely that post-Brexit UK is in full control of how easy it is for things to be imported in to the UK. They don't need a deal with Europe to influence that. Countries have near-unilateral control over imports (although an exception can be made to that principle for military tech).
So this sort of thing is an example of why the UK voters decided to leave - a bit more control over what is entering the country.