I just proved you don’t need to be in EU to trade with it,and so did you: that is what a trade deal is. It is why EU does trade deals.
And yes, it would be better to have one, but certainly not at a price of 39 billion or 10 billion a year, when on balance of trade, we are buyers! “ Duh brain.”
In reality it is a chink in a set of high walls, to eus protection zone, that makes exports harder for those selling out. I’ve done it, have you?
China is not what it was. They are now increasingly GMP , so the standards arguments is also increasingly fallacious.what EU declares as standards are just deliberate trade barriers, Singapore is the best educated work force in the world. Which is why such as Dyson went there, other than to escape corbyn thefts of property.
And a trade deal is like a suit of clothes. In Trying to fit 27 bodies it fits all of them badly, none of them well.
And because 27 are sat round the table with minnows deciding the whole. the decisions are lowest common denominator and take forever to do. Like a company that takes 7 years to make deals, and has too large a bureaucracy Eu will go bust, as others more nimble that take better decisions quicker beat the titanic,
So now you have disproved all your own arguments!