A hard Brexit doesn't mean the EU will impose an embargo on the UK. The EU now happily exports food to WTO members outside the EU, and doesn't impose export tolls or restrictions on those that I'm aware of.
Of course the UK might impose its own tolls, quotas and other import restrictions after crashing out of the EU, but that'll be its own doing.
Edit (since OP updated): It seems implausible that the government would make that self-imposed process onerous enough to result in a literal famine. Which goes to the heart of what you've misunderstood here.
This "chaos at the border" refers to chaos for UK companies trying to export things due to customs requirements the EU has, whereas the UK's hypothetical inability to import something would be due to a purely self-imposed post-EU customs process.
That is irrespective of whether the importing country lifts all tariffs.
> https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-rules...
If enough trucks with TVs and car parts clog the borders, then the food-trucks (who might get some sort of special treatment) are also clogged. They will be clogged 50 miles before they reach the border.
"Our western societies are very efficient but also very fragile. If supermarkets can no longer fill up their shelves, people go hungry fast. If supermarkets can only fill 80% of shelves, people panic and start hoarding food. Those who are too late to the party go hungry. With enough people hungry for a few days, society collapses."
This is still true. I think most people have no idea how fragile our societies are. Still remember as a child in Germany how people made fun of old people hoarding food. Really uncool to hoard food. You know what is more uncool than hording food? Having nothing to eat. African countries or even countries like Ukraine may be much less fragile to disruptions of supply chains. But in industrialized countries, a few weeks of supply chain disruptions can lead to melt down of societies. The single households in cities likely have food for 2 or 3 days.
The UK imports around 25% of food-related commodities from the EU. Even with no deal, these imports will continue (as the EU has to sell them to someone.) Even if the EU stopped, there would not be corpses in the street as there happens to be a very wealthy English-speaking country not too far away that happens to produce more food than any country on the planet and is more than willing to trade with the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/15/food-and-brexit...
So it's not a question of whether the US will trade with the UK, in the long run. It's a question of whether, 2 days after a hard Brexit, everyone has been well-organized enough to keep food flowing across the border at the same rate as always, despite the massive customs upheaval.
The economic concern of a hard Brexit isn't the imports, but the exports. There might be significant economic disruption if the EU slows down trade of items coming INTO the EU and OUT OF the UK. But, the UK is solely in control of how smoothly goods coming INTO the UK and OUT OF the EU get distributed.
Have you worked with bureaucrats? They won't view it as stopping, but rules and paperwork need to be filed. If processes are followed stuff will flow, but there will be a flow stopping shockwave propagating backward at the rate of tps-1c.
This is because, as an EU member, the UK has trade agreements with many countries outside of the EU. After a no deal Brexit, it has none. This affects all UK imports and exports.
What do you think "chaos at the border" means? Every truck, train and ship has to get the papers checked where they could just drive through before. But there are not enough qualified officers to actually check all the papers.
So goods will come in at a trickle.
This is the UK governments own statement. Chaos at the border for six months:
> Britain’s government has revised its worst-case Brexit scenario estimates for chaos at the country’s borders, which it now expects to last for six months rather than six weeks, the political editor of The Sun newspaper said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-borders/uk-now...
> What do you think “chaos at the border” means?
Probably not the UK self-imposing a famine on its people in favour of establishing a permit Raj. It sounds a lot more like government officials trying to get attention through hyperbole and extra funding for their departments than anything else. There’s nothing stopping the UK from declaring no duties on all imports and liberalizing incoming trade from Europe and elsewhere even more than it is now if it’s in their interests to do so. A lot of trade policy is unilateral when it comes down to it.
Y2K could have been really bad. The reason it wasn’t as bad was because people took the threat seriously and spent nearly the last 5-10 years in the 90s spending billions of dollars, and many millions of man hours preventing the worst case scenarios.
OP literally predicted corpses on the street because of paperwork issues.
Starve (and therefore internal anarchy) versus upholding a paperwork check?
The papers won't be checked.
The rules on VAT alone will be enough to clog the ports. Are the trucks covered by insurance if they leave the EU? Are the drivers licenses valid? What about when the trucks return? Are they being re-imported?
It's not the concept of leaving that is the problem, it's all of the "etc".
The EU and the UK already have a trade deal. It is called the World Trade Organization rules.
Yes, some taxes and tariffs might be higher, but it is a complete lie, born of either ignorance or maliciousness, to claim that a country would literally starve to death.
Once again, go look up the WTO trade rules. WTO trade rules cover most of the world.
There is also the question of how easy unravelling our membership of the WTO with the rest of Europe will be.
I'm no expert in how international trade works but it's not as simple as WTO becomes the default day one no deal situation from what I've read. For example https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-trade-...
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/15/food-and-brexit...
Days of wait time would prohibit fresh/frozen food to make it to the UK before perishing.
It could go much much worse than just "bad".
The UK imports a lot of food from EU neighbors. In case of a hard Brexit, this will just ... stop. The question is whether all supermarkets can immediately redo their supply chains. That is not likely. Especially since the UK will loose all trade agreements with the non-EU countries as well. Because they had been made by the EU with the UK participating.
Our western societies are very efficient but also very fragile. If supermarkets can no longer fill up their shelves, people go hungry fast. If supermarkets can only fill 80% of shelves, people panic and start hoarding food. Those who are too late to the party go hungry. With enough people hungry for a few days, society collapses.
Like ... corpses in the streets.
We know what happened when the Soviet Union went down and shelves went empty. This scenario would end a lot worse for the UK. The Soviets had massive redundancies, inefficiencies and fallbacks that could be exploited. Such as people growing potatoes in their Dachas.
See the material by Dmitry Orlov on how the "soviet scenario" would play out in a western country:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-04/closing-collap...
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-p...
Update:
What do you think "chaos at the border" means? Everybody will try to get as much stuff over the border as possible. Everybody will work together. The EU, the UK, the US, everybody. With the best intentions. But this could still go very very bad.
Every truck, train and ship has to get the papers checked where they could just drive through before. But there are not enough qualified officers to actually check all the papers.
So goods will come in at a trickle. Even with the best intentions.
This the UK governments own statement. Chaos at the border for six months:
> Britain’s government has revised its worst-case Brexit scenario estimates for chaos at the country’s borders, which it now expects to last for six months rather than six weeks, the political editor of The Sun newspaper said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-borders/uk-now...