Impact of no-deal Brexit on grocery prices

[mike]

MasterCard to raise interchange fees fivefold.

https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/25/masterca ... -13959517/

Mastercard is set to increase its transaction fees by more than fivefold when an online British shopper uses a debit or credit card to buy from a company based in the European Union. From October 15, credit card fees will increase from 0.3% to 1.5% of the value for every online payment from the UK to the EU, the Financial Times reports. The fee for debit card payments will reportedly increase from 0.2% to 1.15%.

The answer = buy British

Or if you are not in Britain, don't buy from companies in Britain

And also don't go on holiday as this will end up buried in a charge to the consumer (hidden in exchange rate)

Next one will be mobile roaming charges. The telcos have said they don't intend to, but as soon as one breaks ranks the others will.
The consumer had a lot of protection under EU law.

[Sarah]

Congrats America, You’re Not the Dumbest Country in The World Anymore. Britain Is.
How Incompetence, Malice, Greed, and Stupidity Left Britain A Smoking Shattered Wreck

The reality of Brexit is much, much worse than we economists warned about. It goes like this. The British economy is starting to shut down like a heart attack. Europe is simply stopping sending goods to Britain, and Britain to Europe. The costs involved have soared from “nothing” to “impossible.” Remember my friend’s wife’s present? Nobody’s had to fill out customs forms and declarations in these places for thirty years. And since then, economies have changed. It’s not so easy to declare where a thing was “made” or if it ever touched this kind of raw material or that or what its intended use is, and the only option is to pay a fortune to someone who can. Faced with mountains of paperwork for each shipment, businesses are just giving up, throwing their hands up in despair. And that means a) mass unemployment, as they go bankrupt b) shortages and c) higher prices. Sound dire? It is.

British people are shocked, suddenly — after voting for Brexit — to discover that ordering stuff from Europe, which used to be as simple as a click, now comes with massive taxes, customs, and suspicious “handling charges,” which they have to pay, or else. Charges that easily add 25% to 50% to the cost of basic things. And while we economists warned Brexit would make Brits poorer, even we underestimated the effect. We thought tariffs would rise, but we didn’t think that trade would come to a sudden stop, which means mass unemployment and shortages and higher prices are all exploding. That’s the worst case scenario, and it’s fast becoming real. What is it called when trade suddenly stops? Sanctions.

Britain is the only country in the world — the only one I can think of in modern history — amazingly, comically, painfully dumb enough to impose sanctions on itself.

https://eand.co/congrats-america-youre- ... dad4d64754

[pabenny]

But we have tariff-free trade with the EU. Boris said so.

And we've Taken Back Control. Nothing comes into Britain without Johnny Foreigner complying with customs procedures that are controlled on this side of the Channel.

[Chadwick]

But we have tariff-free trade with the EU. Boris said so.

And we've Taken Back Control. Nothing comes into Britain without Johnny Foreigner complying with customs procedures that are controlled on this side of the Channel.

Precisely. "Nothing comes into Britain" is potentially the easier option for many continental companies. Their UK customers have suddenly become harder to service, so they can either invest in supplying us, or invest in finding other customers that are easier to trade with. Of course, not all EU companies will be willing or able to switch away from the UK. Some will have a sizeable stake in UK customers that is worth maintaining. They will need to decide whether to swallow the increased costs or pass them on to their UK buyers.

[sanity clause]

"EU opens up to US clearing houses in blow to City of London"
https://www.cityam.com/eu-opens-up-to-u ... of-london/

[Sarah]

New stories like this are emerging every day... not that you're likely to hear about them from most of the right-wing media (Mail, Express, Telegraph, Sun, etc) that campaigned for Brexit and wish their readers to believe everything is just fine...

“I do not know what the difference is between a tax and a tariff but I do know that a shipment that used to cost £95 and take five minutes to organise will now take an afternoon and cost £400.”

[pabenny]

It's just teething troubles. It'll be all right once the new procedures bed in and those foreign customers decide that buying from Great Britain is now too expensive.

After all, we've Taken Back Control.

[pabenny]

It's not only the pro-Brexit press. The pro-Brexit people that used to post here have gone away or gone quiet. Perhaps they're too embarrassed to admit that "project fear" was right after all.

[blythburgh]

Sadly for some reason Boro Boy stopped posting. I can only hope he found a home that suited him better and that he is not another Covid victim

[mike]

This week hasn't been the EU's finest hour and I'm sure will get brought up and infinitem by Brexiteers.
In reality even if we were still members, we could have opted out of the central vaccine procurement as we did as we had the power of veto and the ability to opt out. If we ever rejoin, we won't have these privileges as the veto and ability to opt out will not be on offer.

The guardian reports that 500 UK companies this month have already started moving operations to the Netherlands and France.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... dApp_Other

The best we can hope for is that when the true scale of job losses is revealed, we join the customs union..
I think Boris and the other clowns can't believe their luck that a pandemic is preventing most people from noticing what is happening and when they do they can say it is nothing to do with Brexit.