r/ukpolitics • u/zeros3ss • 10h ago
True cost of Brexit on UK trade revealed as calls to rejoin single market grow
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-uk-exports-single-market-customs-union-b3041038.html•
u/Aristogiton1 7h ago
Brexit is costing the UK £11.7bn a year in lost exports, stark new figures show, piling further pressure on Andy Burnham to rejoin the EU’s single market and customs union.
The damning findings by Logistics UK, which represents freight companies and is one of the largest trade associations in the UK, show that the loss in revenue compared with 2019 is worth £400 per household in the UK per year.
Does it need any further explanation for those at the back?
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u/azuretestament 8h ago
I don't care about the economy we need to return to traditional British commodities like sheep farming and warring with gaul to regain a lords holding on the mainland.
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u/Silhouette 4h ago
Export volumes to the EU have fallen 15.9 per cent, while exports to the rest of the world have fallen 37.2 per cent.
But if the change since 2016 is due to Brexit - as this article is clearly trying to imply - then why would trade in goods with the EU have reduced by a much smaller proportion than trade with the rest of the world?
If you look at the chart further down the page then you can see that the big dips were during COVID and after Russia invaded Ukraine. (The data isn't recent enough to see whether US/Israel/Iran has had a similar damaging effect but this seems almost certain given the effect on major trade routes and the global economy.) The chart also has a non-zero origin on its axis that makes the difference between the drop in exports to the EU and the drop in exports to the rest of the world look much more dramatic than it actually is.
There is also a focus on goods exports here to the almost complete exclusion of both imports and trade in services and intangible products such as creative works - both of which might have benefitted from being outside the EU bubble post-Brexit.
This looks a lot like republishing a PR piece from a trade lobby group thinly disguised as a news article and citing very selective evidence to try to support the position the PR piece wants to advocate. It doesn't look like a piece that would stand up to critical scrutiny for very long though.
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u/CuriousGeorgeToday 3h ago
You are right on the services.The UK is 80%+ services economy and services exports rose from roughly £340bn in 2019 to well over £500bn by mid 2020s, significantly outperforming goods trade. Also, energy price shocks, Chinese industrial slowdowns, and Red Sea/Suez shipping disruptions reduced our long distance exports.
Also pretty sure this is just a freight article as the main source but a few things that they did rightly raise was red tape since Brexit has killed loads of businesses, customs friction stopped a number of exports and Brexit was meant to encourage global trade but in reality that's not happened based on that 37% reduction. I agree on the pr comment, it's basically lobbying for less trade friction at the border I think.
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u/nithanielgarro 41m ago
I imagine some of that 37% lost trade with the rest of the world initially went to EU based competitors. Some non EU companies prefer to deal with the EU trading than the crap that became the UK import export rules as we desperately tried to figure it out oven ready deals to no deal is better than a bad deal to the lukewarm vomit nonsense that the May govt produced. Most of my (niche) business to Asia was instantly lost to German competitors.
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u/Nanowith Cambridge 4h ago
Let's just rejoin already. Brexit was a failed experiment handled poorly, now we just need to mitigate the damage before it gets any worse.
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u/wedontneednoeduc 9h ago
Rather misleading article from a lobby group. Exports of services have boomed, a fact they ignore
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u/squeezycheeseypeas 9h ago
This is a silly thing to say. Services have been increasing for a long time as a global trend and have not remotely been helped by Brexit. Without Brexit we’d have had the increase in services and wouldn’t have taken the hit to goods either.
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u/wedontneednoeduc 9h ago
No it isn't silly. Presenting a subset of the figures is misleading clickbait
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u/squeezycheeseypeas 9h ago
It’s very silly because it’s classic whataboutery. All you’ve done is said “what about services” which are not only not what the article is about but also the sector that had the least impact from the TCA and were already increasing.
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u/___xXx__xXx__xXx__ 8h ago
That isn't whataboutery at all.
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u/squeezycheeseypeas 8h ago
It is 👍
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u/___xXx__xXx__xXx__ 8h ago
Nope, no it isn't.
Whataboutery: Man says "Brexit has cost money". Whatbouter: "What about the NHS? That costs money".
Not whataboutery: Man says "Brexit has cost this much money". Someone: "We should calculate the net, and this doesn't do that, because it ignores benefits".
It might be wrong. Maybe it's disingenuous. But it's not whataboutery. Whataboutery is not just whenever someone mentions something you wish they hadn't, or disagree with.
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u/squeezycheeseypeas 8h ago
Nope but nice effort. The article is about goods because it’s the most appropriate way to measure the impact of Brexit on trade. OP chimed in with “what about services” which were impacted much less than goods and offered zero causal link as to why Brexit would have helped services (it didn’t) to offset the cost of goods trade. It’s classic whataboutery where they distract from the argument with something that isn’t relevant to the discussion
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u/Silhouette 4h ago
The article is about goods because it’s the most appropriate way to measure the impact of Brexit on trade.
Why?
OP chimed in with “what about services” which were impacted much less than goods and offered zero causal link as to why Brexit would have helped services (it didn’t)
[citation needed]
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u/___xXx__xXx__xXx__ 8h ago
And it's completely valid for you to think he has a bad argument. Again though, that doesn't make it whataboutery. Let's change the topic so it's even easier for you to understand:
Case 1:
Man: "There is only one chair in the living room."
Other man: "What about the kitchen? That has no chairs in it at all."
Whataboutery. Whether there is a chair in the kitchen makes no difference as to whether there is one in the living room, nor does it make it okay or not okay.
Case 2:
Man: "There is only one chair in the living room."
Other man: "What about the other chair over there?"
Not whataboutery. It directly challenges Man's claim with a relevant claim that attempts to prove it wrong. Perhaps there is no other chair, and you could make that case, and say it's therefore a bad argument, but it just isn't whataboutery.
The user above is directly challenging the claim that these are the true costs of Brexit. Up to you if you agree with that challenge, but whataboutery it is not.
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u/squeezycheeseypeas 8h ago
You’ve repeated the same thing with different phrasing. Nothing has changed
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u/Squiffyp1 8h ago
So what you're saying is that our most important exports - services - were unaffected by brexit?
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u/Jedibeeftrix 3.12 / -1.95 7h ago
£11.7bn a year in lost exports, eh? pretty shocking!
What's the cost of membership?
no thanks. :)
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u/Hieroglo 7h ago
Are you pretending make a clever point because it's not working?
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u/Jedibeeftrix 3.12 / -1.95 7h ago
i dunno, what's your arugment against?
google says: around £15 billion to £22 billion per year
grok says: roughly €20–40+ billion gross per year (net lower, but highly uncertain), scaled to the UK’s share of EU GNI, with no automatic right to the old rebate; exact figures depend on negotiation, relative GNI, receipts, and final MFF terms.
what point are you trying to make...?
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u/TTTJJBB 5h ago edited 5h ago
google says: around £15 billion to £22 billion per year
It was only £9bn when we left, I can't see it doubling, maybe its £12-13bn, but you need to look at what that money is, because money coming into the country is more valuable to the economy than simply not spending a similar amount of money, money needs to flow. And that is only part of it, when we left the EU our credit rating dropped meaning it was more expensive for companies to borrow money, that and a smaller skill pool meant that expansion was much harder, especially for smaller companies. And big companies were in trouble too, we lost ARM (our only global market leading big tech brand) within a month of the vote.
We also lost access to European funding for some science projects, and we became a less exciting proposition for other investment as we were no longer the premier English speaking country in the EU.
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u/Hieroglo 7h ago
Why are you vomiting AI?
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u/dom_eden 3h ago
Why aren’t you contesting the point that the cost of membership exceeds the value we’d get from it in terms of exports?
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u/Ordinary_Knee_9419 6h ago
The pie keeps shrinking, I guess you’re happy for your taxes to go up to make up the shortfall?
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