Thom Hartmann is one of America’s most prominent progressive talk show hosts. His latest book, The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America was publisher by Berrett-Koehler recently.















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I know that some listeners are in the UK,

but most aren’t, and for you in the majority, although you’ve probably heard of

Brexit, you mightn’t really be sure why it is such a big and difficult issue.

It is a big and difficult issue, but the fact that it is a big and difficult

issue makes it difficult to explain.















I’m not going to bore you to death here

with all the details, but I have come across one fairly simple example of why

it is so difficult. Cows. The reason – or one of the reasons anyway – is cows.







I’ll explain why in a minute, but first

some basics. The EU is a huge trading bloc, currently 28 nations, with several

more trying to get in, and one trying to get out – the UK. They are separate

countries, but for trading purposes they work as one. If your business in one country

wants to sell something to a customer in another country, you just put it on

the back of a truck and send it to them. No extra paperwork, no taxes.







Tariffs with other countries are the same

for all 28. They have to be. It wouldn’t be possible to have one tariff for

Chinese goods going to France and another for Chinese goods going to Germany,

because then you could just bring it into the one with the lower tariff and

send it to the other.







Product standards are the same as well, so

that you can make a product or component in one country and put it on the back

of a truck and send it to any of the others. It’s been like that for more than

25 years.







Many people in Britain want to leave the EU

so that they can set their own tariffs and product standards independently.

That would mean that the UK and the EU would have to put up tariff barriers and

product standards checks between each other, but that’s what the UK wanted and

that’s their right.