“The things that are proving to be problematic are the things we expected them to be,” said Jones. “So for products, it all comes down to the speed and accuracy with which people are preparing the right paperwork.”
Many British companies – at least 150,000, according to data from the British tax agency – have never traded outside the European Union and therefore have no experience in dealing with customs systems.
The situation in Northern Ireland is one more wrinkle. Northern Ireland will remain partially in the European Union’s single market, 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 customs forms to send goods from England, Wales and Scotland to Northern Ireland, is overburdened.
Some companies anticipated cross-border problems with Europe and filled warehouses with stocked products – auto parts and pharmaceuticals, for example – before the end of the Brexit transition period. This has kept international remittances at a fraction of the normal level so far. In the coming weeks, as these stocks decrease, commercial activity recovers, aggravating delays.
Another new problem faced by major retailers with international locations: “Rules of origin requirements”, which determine whether a product leaving Britain is “British enough” to qualify for tariff-free trade with the European Union. International retailers using websites in Britain as distribution centers are now discovering that they cannot automatically re-export their products to their stores in the European Union without facing tariffs – even if the product comes from the block.
For example, a company could not import jeans from Bangladesh or cheese from France to a center in England and then send them to a store in Ireland without facing export charges. The British Retail Consortium said that at least 50 of its members face such fees. Debenhams, a large but now bankrupt department store chain, closed its Irish website because of confusion over trade rules.
As companies struggle to keep up with changes to the rules, the question is: what does Britain do with the sovereignty and freedom it guaranteed by leaving the European Union? The government has to decide how much it wants to deviate from Europe’s rules, where it may want to deregulate and whether to pay the price for it.