Timezones obviously . If I work for a business in the UK and want a telephone or skype call a supplier in Sydney say , I ' d have to do it at stupid o ' clock if I want to talk to them and it ' s the same vice versa for them . It doesn ' t stop you doing business with Australia , but it is a hinderance . But the real obstacle behind the timezone issue is geographic distance . It makes shipping and delivering goods much more expensive , which makes it more expensive to trade with nations like Canada or Australia than say , Netherlands or Italy . Not to mention people as well it ' s quite feasable for a small business to send some staff to a trade fair in Germany say for a couple of days ticket prices on a budget airline won ' t be triple figures , but the same can ' t be said for sending employees to the other side of the planet , and they ' ll be jetlagged too which won ' t be good if you want to network and impress potential clients ! Geography does still matter excluding the world ' s largest economies The USA and China the general rule of thumbs is that for most countries their main trading partners are those most geographically close to them . I ' m in all favour of closer trade ties with the ' Anglosphere ' but it ' s a false hope that this would ever near to compensating for the economic loss of cutting our ties with Europe .