Brexit

[Bofferbrauer2]

JRPGfan said:

AsGryffynn said:

The idea was that trade partners would only constitute an small part of trade, so that if one partner was unfavorable, you could just swap them with another one with little effect. In other words, many small partners instead of monolithic trading blocks. 

The problem is the rest of the world doesnt play by those rules.
Everyone thats anyone, is in a tradeing block.

The only ones not in one, are small crappy nations that ll then get bent over, in any trade deals they do.
The reason the tradeing blocks have members, is because it works to your benefit to be in one.
You make deals from positions of strength, through unity.

To elaborate on this, just take a look onto this picture:

Only the countries in gray are not part of a trade bloc, and even then, Western Sahara is technically part of Morocco.

As you can see, the only countries without the trade blocs are either totally dependent on their neighbors anyway (Mongolia), are under severe sanctions (Iran, North Korea), have no stable government (Somalia), too new (South Sudan), or either have not much to trade for or are too insignificant so they are left alone (what's left). UK will join the gray area when they left the EU and have to deal with those colored blocs for the most part, which united are generally much bigger than the UK and can therefor set the terms of a trade deal.