“The things that seem to be problematic are the things that we expected to be problematic,” she said. Jones said. “So for goods, it’s about the speed and accuracy with which people prepare the right paperwork.”
Many British businesses – at least 150,000, according to data from the British Tax Agency – have never traded outside the European Union, and therefore have no experience dealing with customs systems.
The situation in Northern Ireland is an extra wrinkle. Northern Ireland will remain partly in the internal market of the European Union, an exception that avoids a border with the Republic of Ireland but creates a border in the Irish Sea. Logistics experts say the Trader Support Service, a free government service to help companies fill out customs forms to ship goods from England, Wales and Scotland to Northern Ireland, is overwhelmed.
Some companies expected cross-border problems with Europe and before the end of the Brexit transition period packed warehouses with stock – for example car parts and pharmaceuticals – full. It has so far kept border supplies at a fraction of their normal level. In the next few weeks, as the stock empties, operating activity will increase, exacerbating delays.
Another new problem facing large retailers with international establishments: ‘requirements of origin rules’, which determine whether a product leaving Britain is ‘British enough’ to qualify for duty-free trade with the European Union. International retailers using websites in the UK as distribution centers are now finding that they cannot automatically export their products back to their stores in the European Union without facing tariffs, even if the product comes out of the block.
For example, a company could not import jeans from Bangladesh or cheese from France into a center in England and then send them to a store in Ireland without facing export tariffs. The British retail consortium has said at least 50 of its members face such tariffs. Debenhams, a large but now bankrupt chain of stores, has shut down its Irish website due to confusion over trade rules.
While companies are struggling to catch up with the rule changes, the question is: What is Britain doing with the sovereignty and freedom they have secured to leave the European Union? The government must decide how much it wants to deviate from European rules, where it may want to deregulate, and whether it wants to pay the price for it.