Sky News stories about fears of disorder and shortages

[grombot]

LDN said:

oyster said:

Teddy Lop said:

There won't be shortages - EU countries still have produce to sell. Worst case scenario is raw food imports from eu attract 10% duty, which in many cases won't all be passed on in final product, ie because 2p worth of flour costs 10% more a £1 loaf of bread will be £1.00.02 or in English, £1. If the EU does decide to throw producer countries like Spain and Ireland under the bus in its making a point to Britain then Some things will rise in price until other sources can be found, although denying said already heavily indebted countries a market it is heavily dependant on in itself might spark a severe economic crash in Europe.

But how does the bread producer account for and pay that extra duty? Suppose they produce 10 MILLION loaves a day and they find out a week before Brexit that tariffs are changing. How can they change IT systems in time to account for that?

And whilst the IT systems are being changed, how do they keep the supply chain going? Do they manually account for the changed tariff? Who does that? No-one is paid to do that right now. Do they hire in some temporary staff? How can they train them in time? And how will they be paid?

And who pays the IT bods to change the systems for the new tariffs?
Maybe you pay them extra to start work earlier and write software in case the tariff rules are different. Maybe you ask them to develop a system to cope with 132 different tariff permutations? And maybe none of them actually get used. and who comes up with the 132 different tariff permutations? I guess they have to pay extra for that too?

And all this investment is throwaway. Like the Y2K spend - never to be used again. No productivity gains. No plant/machinery/IP investment. Throwaway.

The lack of big picture thinking about the impact of Brexit on businesses with intra-EU trade is staggering. As is the complete lack of comprehension of how supply chains work.

You make some good and valid points.

Why on earth do you think they will need IT people to implement this? The infrastructure is already in place, for the 50% plus trade that the UK does with countries outside of the EU. Companies who trade internationally do not tend to get involved with HMRC directly, they employ a customs agent or freight forwarder to do it for them.

The tariff already exists, it is constantly changed with hundreds of changes each month. The changes are currently dictated by the EU, but in the event of a no deal these changes will come from HMRC. The latest big change was the introduction of 25% retaliatory tariffs on certain US origin goods. The tariff can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/trade-tariff

Here is an example of a current requirement for toasted bread from Belgium: https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/trade-tari...

As you can see VAT is 20% and you require a CVED. In the event of a no deal brexit these requirements will not change, and HMRC MAY choose to add a duty tariff to the import, but this would be entirely up to the UK government.

[anonymous-user]

oyster said:

Rubbish.

Companies don't know what they're changing. They don't yet know what Brexit looks like. No-one does.

I'm in the middle of delivering a £17m programme for one of my clients to cope with Brexit changes. That's £17 million not being invested fully in new machinery, processes or people.

You said Y2K was throwaway. It wasn't. I spent a couple of years doing IT upgrades for hundreds of companies, from the largest retailers in the UK down to Savile Row tailors. They all benefited from the investment.

Your complaint is more about the current uncertainty than Brexit itself. It's the price you have to pay sometimes when you live in a country that allows change via democracy. You could always go to Venezuela and try trading there if you want a dictatorship system that never changes.