They were not applied. Tomorrow, they can be 30% or 5.36%. If your only goal was depending on a fluke and a brain fart of a senile old man 10 years after Brexit was voted, then I don’t need to tell you how poorly thought out it was. If that is your measure of success, then Russia and Belarus welcome you.

So a couple of things:

1. The EU has that reprieve. Given the EU can bite back, it's possible that reprieve becomes permanent.

2. Last time Trump slapped tariffs on UK + EU, Biden prioritised reversing tariffs on the EU first because they're a bigger trading partner than the UK.

As the above poster pointed out, that's to say nothing of the many downsides of not being in the EU.