A cheer for escaping the Euro-yoke! The UK’s balance of trade with the EU has seriously improved. The value of UK goods imports from the EU fell by £6.6bn in January, while exports to them fell only £5.6bn. That’s good, isn’t it? Anyway Covid will have caused some dips, and since our newly sovereign nation has sovereignly got our sovereign sovereignty back we’ll be proudly trading more with the rest of the world (you know, the Empire and other foreigners).
Well actually…
- Since imports are a much bigger portion of our EU trade that drop means the balance of trade is worse
- No lunatic could call a 40.7% export drop good, even against a 28.8% import drop
- A non-EU trade growth of 1.7% shows both that Covid isn’t relevant and that gains to the outside world are trifling in comparison with EU-trade losses
It’s true that January’s figures are negatively coloured by advance stockpiling, but the direction is clear, and the scale? In other words the facts are demonstrating what has long been predicted by the experts: leaving the EU would be self-harm in trading terms.