Over 30 million people in the United Kingdom voted June 23, 2016 on whether the country should leave the European Union; the motion to leave the EU won by four percent. Many U.K. citizens are worried about trade and rising costs of different items that are exported from other countries. 

  “Every day, 1 million people in the United States go to work for U.K.-based company, including about 20,000 people here in Washington State and employed by British companies like Rolls Royce, BAE Systems or GKN has about 190 U.K. companies employing people in Washington State,” Robin Twyman, Consul of Business and Government affairs at the U.K. Government office in Seattle said. “And every day, a million people in the U.K. go to work for a U.S.-headquartered company, those sort of Washington State companies like Boeing, like Starbucks, like Microsoft and Amazon. Now, all this takes place without a trade agreement.” 

The United States is a trade mogul with the U.K. 

Washington State alone exported $4 billion worth of goods to the U.K. last year. Brexit will be followed by a trade deal that the U.K. alone will be making.

“It will be an opportunity for Washington. So to put that into a bit of context, the U.K. and the U.S. already have a very prosperous trade and investment relationship, “ Twyman said.

Bilateral Trade is a system used between the two countries, often used to improve investment and further trade by eliminating tariffs that may raise costs unnecessarily. This form of trade also eliminates other barriers that may hinder people from investing in a company.

“Because the U.K. is within the European Union at the moment, we do not have our own trade policy, we can’t go and decide who we can have a trade agreement with, it’s all done as part of the European Union,” Twyman said. “The European Union does not have a trade agreement with us. When we leave the European Union, the U.K. will get its own trade policy back. It will start negotiating trade agreements with some of these top trade partners around the world and the U.S. is at the top of the list.”

Currently a deal still hasn’t been planned out for when Brexit will be officially put in place, the date for Brexit to happen was originally going to be Oct. 31 but the U.K. Prime minister Boris Johnson introduced a new voting bill that is set to be decided Dec.10, which put the date for Parliament to decide on how Brexit will take place on a back burner.