Trade experts point to a problem with Theresa May's Brexit strategy

What's more, says Rem Korteweg, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER) think-tank, even if Britain secured an agreement to reduce tariffs on EU-UK trade and smooth over some customs red tape, it may still fail to remove a major problem for British business after Brexit: checks on UK goods when they cross EU borders. Korteweg says that British businesses exporting goods into the EU after Brexit would likely still need to submit to so-called “rules of origin” checks at the border, to establish whether the British company had paid tariffs on any parts of their goods imported from a third, non-EU country.

The EU is likely to impose this, says Korteweg, because it would stop “any type of customs agreement [becoming] a backdoor for circumventing the common external tariff.”