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However severe, immediate economic pressures of one kind or another look unavoidable. Even after that uncertain date when arrangements with the EU are settled, ill effects would continue if Britain retains the largely European economic orientation that it assumed when it joined the EU.  Without union membership, its economy cannot help but face ongoing disadvantages if it retains its bias toward seeking business on the continent, dealing with third parties as a member of a European unit and selling itself to investors as a place of access to that trade zone. The “leave” camp was so concerned about exit because it implicitly assumed Britain would carry on in this way. But, as indicated, Britain has other options. Even as it tries for the best deal possible with the EU, it could improve its economic prospects dramatically by leveraging its new, separate status to gain a more complete exposure to the world’s most dynamic economies, something it could not do as an EU member.

Such a global approach would seem to have promise. Europe, as important as it will remain to the United Kingdom, is, after all, not the world, and certainly not its most dynamic part. The EU has grown only 1.2 percent a year in real terms during the past three years and an even slower 1.1 percent if the calculation excludes the UK economy. Contrast that to the United States, which has grown almost twice as fast at 2.1 percent a year. Canada, growing at 2.0 percent a year during this time, and Australia, growing at 2.4 percent, have also outpaced Europe by a considerable margin. All three countries have shown a willingness to reach agreements with Britain. India, though less vocal, looks like a promising partner; it grew at a 7.0 percent annual rate. China grew 7.3 percent a year during this time. And these are only the larger players. Many smaller countries, all of which could trade more with Britain than they do presently, are showing considerable economic dynamism. Indonesia, for instance, has averaged a growth rate of 5.1 percent a year, Malaysia 5.2 percent, Singapore 3.8 percent and Vietnam 6.0 percent. The European Commission itself forecasts that in the next fifteen years, fully 90 percent of the world demand will emerge outside of Europe.

Britain might also do better negotiating for itself with these alternative, fast-growing economies than EU negotiators have done for it. Brussels, after all, has failed to sign treaties with most of these important economies. Its muddled approach no doubt has interfered. It claims to have pursued FTAs as a substitute for the failed general efforts at trade liberalization, most particularly the stalled Doha round of negotiations overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO). But even as it makes such claims, it admits to a political agenda beyond trade. Unlike the United States, for instance, which has kept trade negotiations on trade, modelling them on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), EU negotiators, by their own admission, have pursued FTAs mostly to encourage stability and regional integration along the lines of the EU in Europe. EU literature claims to have followed this guiding principle in negotiations with regions as diverse as Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, Latin America and Southeast Asia.  Though such objectives do not necessarily contradict the objective of trade liberalization, neither are they particularly well-suited to the interests of each EU member.

In addition to muddling matters with mixed objectives, the EU has failed Britain in two areas especially, agriculture and financial services. Though the EU claims that its FTAs seek to remove tariffs on some 90 percent of trade among signatories, it nonetheless has consistently protected agriculture. The treaty signed with South Africa, for instance, excludes tariff reductions on 280 agricultural lines. Since farming is a small part of the British economy—a mere 0.7 percent in fact—the country has hardly benefited from such protections, certainly less than France, for instance, where agriculture is almost three times as important. What is more, EU insistence on agricultural concessions has certainly made it harder to get concessions from these other countries in areas such as financial services that matter more to Britain. To be fair to the EU negotiators, agreements on investments and financial services are notoriously difficult. But the EU’s insistence on protecting agriculture can only have impeded headway.

On its own, Britain could alter the balance of these FTA negotiations. A greater British willingness to make concessions on agricultural trade might have great appeal to those many fast-growing developing economies that depend on agricultural exports. And for such concessions, these potential British trading partners might well make concessions of their own, perhaps in financial and business services. Canada, Australia and the United States, though each has a fully-developed financial sector, might well accommodate Britain anyway because agriculture exports remain important to each of them. Of course, the UK, by leaving the union, would give up the EU’s major negotiating advantage, which is size. At one-sixth of the EU, its offer of access is much less compelling than such an offer from Brussels. Still, as one of the largest ten economies in the world, interaction with Britain is hardly something any potential trading partner would lightly dismiss.

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Now that its people have voted for exit, the country would seem to have more room to maneuver than most recent commentary admits. If it fails to use that room, if it maintains the European economic focus that its former EU membership effectively imposed on it, it will pay an economic price for the sovereignty that its voters have demanded. But if it takes a more global approach, it can make trade arrangements that enable it to gain from more rapid growth in the Americas, Asia, and Australia. Since London can pursue European arrangements at the same time that it looks further afield, it is only a lack of imagination, energy or will that could cause the country’s leadership to ignore non-European vistas. History suggests the additional effort should come naturally. Britain has long sought economic strength outside Europe even while pursuing active interests on the continent.

Mr. Ezrati is chief economist for Vested, a New York-based communications firm, a contributing editor at The National Interest, and an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). His most recent book, Thirty Tomorrows, describing how the world can cope with the challenges of aging demographics, was recently released by Thomas Dunne Books of Saint Martin’s Press.

Image: British twenty-pound notes. Pixabay/Public domain