EU wants mutual open borders and yearly gold tribute
The UK is only the fith largest steel producer, and from the looks of things it has failed to modernize, it can always source its steel from the EU. Steel Mills are huge long term investments the one the UK have arent going anywhere and can always be restarted.
So you mean that the EU gives up the fish in British waters and gets back some of the British steel demand ?
(some, because there are many kinds of steel grades and steel half fabricate shapes and the demand will change over time and steel mills are specialised)
I think that Brits buying EU steel will be difficult to implement in terms of tariffs and NTBs, also again because of changing demand scope kind of steel product and China facing some day in the future overcapacity in steel themselves (low price export)
IDK
But it is an opening.
That gold tribute is membership contribution and small coin compared to the financial benefits of membership.
That money is also not burned in higher operational cost of the EU or in EU countries, like paying higher wages, but a forced investment into all kinds of infra and for agro, for the farmers a compensation for higher cost from higher standards (envirinment, health) imposed by the EU. Many EU countries are in a squeeze between short term (higher operational cost demand from the people) and long term (more investments by a government with positive externalities for a better setting of the economy). Capex not Opex.
The proverbial manager of Big Corporate not looking further than the next quarter results is meanwhile more and more surpassed by politicians with an even shorter time period for results (Johnson and Trump nice examples of short term pennywise poundfoolish satisfying and influencing tabloids) Thanks the erosion of the technical quality of the Civil Service, thanks the erosion of the representative democracy.
Back to that steel.
yes
UK steel production is close to zero (7% of Japan, 50% of Spain) and you need to invest up to 300k Sterling per employee to be top notch again.
It is still a watershed decision to let go of a base industry, not only because of the B2B suppliers losing turnover and knowledge synergy (I care much less about the lunchrooms lost) but also all sectors downstream will be similarely affected.
The other big negative is that you have to import all steel, increasing the pressure to have products you can export with a comparative advantage. Is there any low-hanging fruit left there for the domestic UK industry (except services that can travel long distance) ?
The next base industry ?
Will that that be the lower end chemical industry ?
And where will car manufacturing end ? As assembly lines for imported components ?
Political souvereignty in exchange for dependency on imported essential and strategic components and half-fabricates including for shipbuilding, tanks, cars, machine building, etc, etc ?