"Yes, and the vast majority of countries in the world are members of trade blocs. Why do you think that is?"
Trading blocs are an excellent idea. Unfortunately the EU is a little more than a trading bloc. In any case, a little research needed, Kromo (it always helps):
There are three major trading blocs in the world apart from the EU. There is the Cairns Group (most South American countries, Canada, Australasia and a few far eastern countries); NAFTA (the USA, Canada and Mexico); and APEC (Canada, USA, Chile, China, Russia, Australasia and a few far eastern countries).
You will note immediately that some countries are members of more than one organisation meaning that their trading arrangements are not restricted in the way that membership of the EU entails. You will also discover that membership of none of these organisations means the members have to endure unrestricted freedom of movement of people between them; they do not have to accept that their laws are subsidiary to those of the bloc; they are not bound by the decisions of a supra-national court administered by the bloc; they are free to make trading arrangements bilaterally with other countries if they wish; they do not have to collect tariffs on behalf of the bloc and remit 80% of those tariffs to the administration; their traders are only bound by the bloc’s standards when they want to trade with other members of the bloc and not even if they have no intention of ever doing so; they are not bound by common environmental and labour laws; they have not submitted their resources for use among the bloc; they do not pay massive subscription fees (which are mainly distributed to the "poorer members" of the bloc. Your contention that “it is pretty much inconceivable for us to make post-Brexit trade deals without changing our regulations and laws to suit countries we trade with” is false. None of the countries I have mentioned who are members of trading blocs or those who have formed bilateral trading agreements “change their laws” to accommodate trade. (Can you imagine China, the USA, Australia or Singapore changing their laws so that they can trade with each other?). They agree common standards for goods and services traded and those standards need only be complied with for the specific goods. They don’t “change their laws”.
Likening the EU to a “Trading bloc” is about as disingenuous as it gets. It is an organisation which, as can be seen from the tortuous “negotiations” that have been going on, encroaches on virtually every aspect of everybody’s lives to a greater or lesser degree. More than that, as has also been seen, it removes from the electorate the little control they have over the way their lives are manipulated. Look at the powers held by the administrators of the major trading blocs I have mentioned and compare them to the powers held by the Euromaniacs and you may understand what I mean.