What Will Brexit Mean For Trade?
At this point it’s been over a year since the UK voted to leave the European Union in a referendum that has become known as the Brexit vote. I wrote at the time about the potential devastating economic impact of the Brexit, and indeed there were many people forecasting a great deal of turmoil for the UK economy. But now, some 15 months on from the Brexit decision (and getting closer to the actual, formal exit of the UK from the European Union) we can look back with a little bit more perspective.
For starters, it’s worth remembering that this was one of the more surprising geopolitical events in quite some time, at least to a lot of casual observers. While some experts and even some polling firms believed in the end that Brexit had a good shot at passing, we need only look to the betting markets for confirmation of the surprise factor in retrospect. Brexit set a world record for the largest sum of wagers on a non-sports event, and across the board bookmakers reported massive losses – meaning the favored outcome (that Britain would remain in the EU) lost out.
This is not merely to point out that Brexit surprised people, but to indicate why some of the early economic predictions might have come from analysts who were a little carried away.
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