"'No deal' Brexit would mean £6bn in extra costs for UK exporters"

Crashing out of the European Union without a trade deal would saddle British exporters with more than £6bn a year of extra costs, according to analysis that reveals the limited options facing UK negotiators just weeks before Brexit talks start.

Theresa May has insisted “no deal is better than a bad deal” when it comes to the terms of Britain’s departure from the EU, suggesting the prime minister believes falling back on World Trade Organisation rules is a credible alternative if she cannot get her preferred option of a new free trade agreement with the EU.

Yet the implications of such a dramatic plan B remain poorly understood, even within Whitehall, where civil servants are scrambling to assemble the detailed market data needed to negotiate quotas that might cushion a hard landing. One senior official said the picture remained hazy because civil servants “haven’t done the homework yet”.

However, without EU cooperation, the cost of the prime minister’s “no deal” scenario is clear. As part of a series examining the plausibility and impact of a hard Brexit, the Guardian has analysed the latest international trade figures compiled by the UN and World Bank – showing that the $204bn-worth of British goods bound for Europe each year would be hit with $7.6bn in new tariffs under current WTO rules, equivalent to £6.1bn at today’s exchange rate.

Read more at The Guardian