Huffington Post ? The Blog:
For the third time we surveyed MPs on their attitude to Brexit ? and the results were fascinating
22 January 2018
What is clear is that the thinking on Conservative benches is in sharp contrast to the consensus amongst professional economists. Here, we find a different logic entirely. Leaving the single market and the customs union will make trade with the EU much more costly – even if a post-Brexit EU-UK FTA means we avoid the hardest of hard Brexits. Swati Dhingra estimates that non-tariff barriers in services have an ad valoram equivalent of between 8.5 and 47.3% when it comes to services trade between the EU and the US. Outside the single market, the UK will be liable to at least some of these costs. In aggregate terms, she estimates that a hard Brexit would directly reduce GDP by about 3% per year due to higher trade barriers – with potential indirect costs that could double or triple this figure.