Brexit trade woes grind on

'Anything but frictionless'

Malcolm Harrison, the CEO of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply in the UK, told the Bloomberg news agency that the situation reminded him of the difficulties of trading with mainland Europe 40 years ago. "We used to have all sorts of tariff barriers. We used to have quite a lot of administration and customs controls to get through. We used to carry more stock. We used to have many more alternative suppliers because of those challenges of a border which was anything but frictionless," Harrison said.

Although the post-Brexit situation did not turn the clocks back to 1973 when the UK joined the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the EU, it has done much damage to cross-Channel businesses, and years of preparation for the post-Brexit scenario did not prevent trade disruption.

For one, the long queue of trucks waiting to clear customs at the port of Dover or the undersea Channel Tunnel to France has not been cleared, so much so that the UK government recently signed a 200,000-pound ($244,605) yearlong contract with a humanitarian organization to provide food and water to truck drivers stuck in the line for over two days.

According to data from supply chain information organization FourKites, over-the-road shipments crossing the Schengen Area border — which encompasses most of the EU — were delayed 38 percent of the time in the fourth quarter of last year.

Many complaints about post-Brexit trade have been voiced by businesses registered with the British Chambers of Commerce, or BCC.

In a December poll, more than three-quarters of firms for which the Brexit deal is applicable said it is not helping them increase sales or grow their business. In addition, 56 percent of firms face difficulties adapting to the new rules for trading goods.

A retailer in Dundee, Scotland, told the chamber: "Customs on both sides of the EU border seem to have a separate set of rules to be able to charge different amounts for the same thing. We don't know until it's too late what these costs are."

A manufacturer in England's East Midlands observed: "We have experienced a lot of our goods going missing when they reach customs control. Due to additional import costs, we have found that quite a few of our EU customers that we have dealt with for a long time, in regard to providing a qualifying service, now stay within the EU instead of the UK."

Shevaun Haviland, director-general of the BCC, said: "Businesses feel they are banging their heads against a brick wall as nothing has been done to help them, almost two years after the TCA was first agreed.

"The longer the current problems go unchecked, the more EU traders go elsewhere, and the more damage is done."