Brexit: British to vote on EU membership, U-M experts available to comment

June 8, 2016
Written By:
Nardy Baeza Bickel
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EXPERTS ADVISORY

The United Kingdom will hold a referendum June 23 on whether to leave the European Union, a process that’s been referred to as Brexit. University of Michigan experts can discuss the history behind the vote as well as its political and economic implications.

Alan Deardorff, professor of economics and public policy, is an expert on international trade. Contact: 734-764-6817, alandear@umich.edu

“How much Brexit will change trade between the U.K. and EU depends a lot on what sort of trade policies, specifically tariffs, replace the U.K.’s membership in the EU,” he said. “The U.K. and EU have zero tariffs on each other’s exports, in contrast to their positive tariffs—around 4 percent on average—against exports from others. If the U.K. leaves the EU and nothing else happens, then these tariffs will rise and deter trade between them by some amount, perhaps 5 or 10 percent.

“The EU has free trade agreements with many outside countries such as Norway and Switzerland, and the Brexit advocates hope to get the same sort of arrangement for the U.K. But whether that will happen quickly or at all is far from certain, in part because the other EU members will not want to set a precedent of being kind to a country that leaves the group—Norway and Switzerland never joined. My guess would be that U.K.-EU trade will take a hit, but remain quite large.

“There will be some effects on international trade on others. Some of these effects will be positive, as other countries both inside and outside the EU will be able to export more to the U.K. and the EU in place of the trade between them that is discouraged. Some have speculated that London will lose its place as the pre-eminent financial center of the world, though I think that’s unlikely. EU policies don’t much affect London’s financial dealings, and when they do matter, they probably hurt as much as help.”


Kali Israel is an associate professor of history and can discuss the historical complexity of the upcoming referendum. Contact: kisrael@umich.edu

“Part of what makes the current situation so complex is that the history of British attitudes, including the major parties’ positions, to the European Union and its predecessors is very complex, and people can be on the same side of the remain/leave division for very, very different reasons,” she said. “But another area of complexity emerges if you break down differences in experiences, attitudes and possible consequences within the U.K. between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“The polls are very volatile anyway, but they are also perhaps misleading when they give ‘British’ numbers without separating out the four nations, since England is so much bigger in population. Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland have polling responses which are distinct but are also different from each other. And to make it worse, sometimes they overlap with regions within England that aren’t the same as the English totals.

“I would emphasize that “Brexit” not only draws on some much older histories but that voters are making choices for reasons that go far beyond economic issues on both/all sides, and that the constitutional consequences are potentially huge within Britain, not just between the UK and the EU. There is also, however, especially as the days go on, a lot of fatigue about the issue—the coverage can seem relentless and yet unhelpful, especially as clearly untrue things get repeated or circulated even after having been retracted or rebutted.”


Linda Lim is a professor of strategy whose expertise includes political economy and business-government relations. She can discuss the economic ramifications of the referendum. Contact: 734-763-0290, lylim@umich.edu

“Brexit will have a negative impact on U.K. trade with the EU, and both will suffer slower growth as a result. Slower growth will also reduce their trade with other world regions, including the U.S. and Asia,” she said. “Brexit proponents hope that increased trade with the latter may partly substitute for reduced trade with the EU, but both the U.S. and Asia are more likely to trade and invest less with the U.K. once it is no longer a gateway to the larger EU.”


Geoff Eley is a professor of contemporary history. He can provide historical background for this referendum. Contact: 734-764-6373, ghe@umich.edu

“The main response to the Common Market during the 1950s and 1960s was one of indifference and skepticism, sometimes larded with more aggressive and self-consciously militant hostility,” he said. “Each attitude expressed or bespoke various kinds of ‘little Englander’ nationalism and isolationism, usually joined closely and strongly to ideas of the Empire, even if in the more generous versions these became redirected toward the commonwealth, often in genuinely idealist ways. Largely harmoniously with the latter, the so-called ‘special relationship’ to the U.S. was also part of this aversion against Europe, sometimes disingenuously but often from positive identification.

“It was only during the 1970s that the discussion acquired a more developed and more direct relationship to the whys and wherefores of European integration per se: whereas the pro-European case drew on a growing awareness of British economic weakness and the widely diffused language of ‘decline,’ the opponents of integration stressed the likely consequences for British sovereign independence, whether from the Right in a straightforwardly nationalistic perspective or from the Left’s Keynesian critique of the diminished latitude for national economic planning and reformist freedom of maneuver.

“Whatever the actualities of the so-called ‘special relationship’ from the 1950s to the 1980s, since the 1990s the effective subservience of British governments to U.S. policymaking (e.g., British policy during the buildup to the Iraq War and Blair’s reputation as ‘Bush’s poodle’) hardly suggests that the U.K. has very much leverage on policymaking in D.C. Even in the earlier periods there’s plenty of evidence of U.S. governments paying little heed to British interests or sensitivities, from the Suez debacle to the U.S. invasion of Grenada.

“Measured against the higher priorities of U.S. relations with the EU, at all of the decisive levels of macroeconomic policymaking, a separated British economy is hardly likely to claim any preferential treatment. But I’m inclined to think that British separation from the EU is in any case practically unworkable—the U.K. and EU economies are by now too inextricably integrated—so that even if Brexit succeeds, the resulting political chaos will require some patched-up solution that enables Britain to stay.”