Thread by @mafevema

Brexit viewed from America

"For many others — among them bankers, traders, truckers, architects and millions of migrants — Christmas was only the beginning, Day 1 of a high-stakes and unpredictable experiment in how to unstitch a tight web of commercial relations across Europe."

British firms have sent employees to Paris and Frankfurt to set up toeholds on the continent. But for all those preparations, seven days are now all that stand between businesses and an avalanche of new trading obstacles on Jan. 1.

Britain’s services sector — encompassing not only London’s powerful financial industry, but also lawyers, architects, consultants and others — was largely left out of the 1,246-page deal, despite the sector accounting for 80 percent of British economic activity.

The new deal ...leaves financial firms without the biggest benefit of EU membership: the ability to easily offer services to clients across the region from a single base.This has long allowed a London bank to provide loans to a business in Venice, or bonds for a company in Madrid

That loss is especially painful for Britain, which ran a surplus of £18 billion, or $24 billion, on trade in financial and other services with the European Union in 2019, but a deficit of £97 billion, or $129 billion, on trade in goods. Prime Minister Boris Johnson

acknowledged it offered “not as much” access for financial firms “as we would have liked.” But he was not as straightforward about the difficulties facing even British retailers

In promising that there were “no non-tariff barriers” to selling goods after Brexit, he ignored the tens of millions of customs declarations, health assessments and other checks that businesses will now be responsible for.

Brexit Deal Done, Britain Now Scrambles to See How It Will Work nyti.ms/3aCxnF8

“The outcome of this trade negotiation is precisely what happens with most trade deals: The larger party gets what it wants and the smaller party rolls over.” Ouch.