• The EU was formed as a Customs Union, not a Free Trade Area; against non-EU countries, it erected certain trade barriers known as the Common External Tariffs. However, the World Trade Organisation has been negotiating down trade barriers internationally for many years, and as a result these are now generally low.
  
  
• The pro-EU organisation British Influence states that "UK exporters would still have to pay 15% on average for food and 10% on cars to trade with the EU,but this is mere scare-mongering. Since the EU sells Britain far more than we buy from it, it would not be in its interests to impose these tariffs even if it could, since we could impose similar tariffs on the goods it sells us.
  
  
• The Eurosceptic organisation Business for Britain issued a report stating that if the Common External Tariffs were levied on British exports, they would be at an average rate of only 4.3%.
  
  
• Business for Britain calculates that the total cost to business would be lower than the current UK net contribution to the EU budget (which is, of course, ever-rising).
  
  
• When we are outside the EU, it will be cheaper for the British government to pay exporters' tariffs for them rather than paying into the EU budget as it does now. Even so, it would not be in the EU's interests to impose the Common External Tariffs on UK exports, since - if we did the same - the damage to their trade would be more than to ours.