Nissan Sunderland plant to close if EU rules freeze out UK

The point of Brexit was to allow us choice.  The EU is a protectionist organisation which does indeed curb its citizens from buying outside of the EU via tariffs (taxes).  Having regained our sovereignty, we could do the same.  However, as tariffs are taxes, they have to be used as a tool appropriately.  We could, for example, say that if the EU hurts Nissan production here, then we will impose higher tariffs on their goods to pay for the economic consequences of losing Nissan production.  Yes, this means that anyone buying an EU car pays for it, but it also reduces sales of those vehicles to the UK (because they become more expensive).  We might, by lowering tariffs on Japanese vehicles, encourage Japanese sales to hurt the EU manufacturers.

All these things are tools to use - which we are free to do, and France and Germany cannot.  This is what people miss - that we can do whatever we like, free of EU protectionism.

Economically, leaving the EU has indeed been harmful...but not everything is about money.  The problem has been that British politicians are incredibly inept at business and politics.  Brexit can and should be used to the UK's advantage.  This has not been done.  By now, we could have been the Singapore of Europe and slashed business taxes to encourage international business to HQ here.  Again, this was not done.

So the problem isn't Brexit (and the comments by ignoramuses here are disappointing), it's that it hasn't been applied correctly.  As I said, overall, Brexit has harmed the British economy by as much as 8%.  However, the two economic basket cases of Europe are France and Germany - both of whom ARE the EU!  So it's highly likely that our economy would be down, anyway - even if Brexit had not of happened.  But I come back to the fact that if we had politicians who could have used it, we would be much stronger.