On Fri, 17 Jun 2016 17:03:37 +0100, tim... wrote:

But it wouldn't be a *free* trade deal, we'd have to re-negotiate
those,

and that is where I was told I was wrong (along with others) and
that the UK would *not* need to re-negotiate any trade deals.

Of course the UK would need to negotiate any trade deals, since
there are no deals in place currently between the UK and any other
nation. We could ask for any pre-existing EU deal to be the basis of
it, assuming that's what we wanted to have, but until that was
negotiated and agreed, there would be nothing in place.

You know that and I know that and the Vote Leave campaign knows that
but sadly from the exchanges on here too many Brexit supporters do
not.

Indeed we do not, because it is not true!

You don't need a trade deal to trade.

Who - apart from Whisky Dave - ever thought you did?

Most of the Remainers

"Most" is quite a broad-brush to wave about.

But the fact is that anybody who thinks that - whichever side they're on
- is wrong.

Of course a newly exited UK could trade without any trade deals in
place, but it wouldn't be very competitive, compared to those nations
and groups of nations between which there were deals in place.

there are hundreds of country pairs that happily trade with each other
without a separate deal in place. the idea that it is difficult is
nonsense

Nobody said it was difficult...

Look, it's very simple.

If you import something from the US you pay duty, 10% normally.

If we (UK or EU) had a free trade deal with the US that said "zero duty
on this category of product", you would not pay duty. The US would be
more competitive than a random other source - Canada, say - that we
didn't have that deal with.

That's how free trade deals work.

It's also why we separate trade deals are utterly pointless while we're
in the EU - because if the UK applied zero duty to US goods in a
category, but Germany didn't, we could buy the same things through
Germany and not pay the duty.