Brexit red tape knocks £17bn off UK trade with EU in just three months, watchdog finds – Exporters forced to fill in 48 million customs declarations and 140,000 health certificates over eight-month period

21 comments

  2. > “Total trade in goods between the UK and EU was 15 per cent (£17bn) less in Q2 when compared with the equivalent quarter in 2018,” – the “comparator year” used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), its report states.

    Of course, the Independent (being a tabloid rag that is incapable of putting forward anything objective regarding Brexit) fail to point out that they are using trade volumes here (rather than £ amounts), so the £17bn is a inflation adjusted figure, the actual cash change is $14bn.

    But that isn’t the major oversight, the real kicker is that of that £17bn reduction in trade, almost £13bn (76%!) comes from lower EU imports into the UK. UK exports, by comparison, are only responsible for £4b of the overall decline in trade. The UK’s trade deficit with the EU narrowed by £9bn euros given the same quarterly comparison, if we were to apply the EU’s own mercantalist standards to analysing the data, that would be considered a resounding success!

    Ironically, it’s EU exporters to the UK who appear to have lost out more, in absolute terms, than their UK counterparts – and this is despite the fact that the UK is still not applying customs checks to EU imports (so the situation could get worse as far as the EU is concerned). Personally, I think we need to give it a couple of years to see how actual trade numbers shake out once we get through the adjustment phase and away from the pandemic.

    As with everything Brexit, you need to read through the spin. Obviously any reduction in trade is undesirable, but this is far more asymmetric than the Independent want you to believe.

    Of course, OP carries on his anti-Brexit campaign undaunted, and is willing to use any misleading statistics to further their narrative.

    Edit: I’ve noticed the karma score for this comment, and some others have moved around quite wildly over the past hour. I don’t expect my reasoned critique of the anti-Brexit circle jerk to get overwhelming support this sub but at the same time it looks a little fishy. Oh nvm, it’s just the unitedkingdom [brigade](https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/qn47pm/brexit_red_tape_knocks_17bn_off_uk_trade_with_eu/hjegpqy/)

  3. [Link to OBR summary](https://obr.uk/box/the-initial-impact-of-brexit-on-uk-trade-with-the-eu/)

    Pretty much running to forecast:

    > Since our first post-EU referendum EFO in November 2016, our forecasts have assumed that total UK imports and exports will eventually both be 15 per cent lower than had we stayed in the EU. This reduction in trade intensity drives the 4 per cent reduction in long-run potential productivity we assume will eventually result from our departure from the EU.

  4. ~~A mere 48,571 weeks of the money the brexiters wrote on the side of the Leave Bus that was going to go to the NHS after Brexit.~~

    ~~Edit: 934(!!!) years worth.~~

    ~~Edit2: In just 3 months! The mind boggles.~~

    Using the english-language definition for billion (thousand millions), which is of course the one that the ONS uses, the correct number is 48 weeks of money promised for the NHS (never delivered by the way) lost to the new trade bureaucracy in 3 months.

    Still shocking, IMHO, but not as much as my crazy overinflated numbers.

    Edit: I properly read the article and looked around for ONS data and have to accept that the £17 billion figure is a fall in exports and not trade expenses as I thought and a fall in exports number can’t really be compared with a hard payment number like the £350 million (or the actual true number, £270 million) of net EU membership fees because:

    * Some of the fall in exports is offset by changes to imports (although in the latest couple of months UK the trade balance became worse)
    * At this point in time it’s still hard to separate Covid effects from Brexit effects in UK trade numbers – just like trade had a downward pressure at the peak of the Covid pandemic it now has an upward pressure from the Covid-recovery.
    * Some EU trade might have been offsetted by non-EU trade (although that doesn’t seem to be much in the ONS figures I saw).
    * Whilst the EU fees are a hard amount, money spent on imports and exports is actually offset by the products/services being traded for that money (i.e. if a UK company imports 10,000 tons of steel the money it pays for it cannot be treated as a loss to the Economy since they got the 10,000 tons of steel in return for that money, goods which would otherwise have to be produced in the UK – costing manpower, energy and so on – from raw materials which possibly need to be imported and the same thing for a reverse flow were money gotten for and exported product or service is partly offset by the costs in making/providing that product or service.

    So my comment was misleading and the true economic impact for the UK of what the article itself tells us is unclear in the absence of more data.

  5. We’ve stopped working with 6/7 of our UK suppliers because it’s just so costly to import stuff and our clients will obviously not pay the increase in cost.

    The only UK supplier we’ve kept is the one large enough to be able to setup a warehouse in Belgium.

    3/6 suppliers we stopped working with we’ve been dealing with for 25 years and had very good relations with.

    Two of those are small family run businesses which have been devastated by Brexit as they have lost almost their entire EU clientele. We really tried to make things work with them but the cost was just too much.

    It was quite sad for us since we love working with family businesses and as I said, we’ve been cooperating together for many years.

    On the other hand we’re now quite happy with our newly found Italian, Portuguese and Greek suppliers.

  12. I feel sorry for Ireland in all of this. I hope this doesn’t affect them too much, negatively.

  14. I was buying from 3 UK eBay sellers semi regularly as the end price could be lower than elsewhere. Post Brexit and post whatever first 6 months of this year were called added taxes always make them more expensive than others. So I stopped buying from them.

  19. Well, I hope that Brexit will make italians more responsible with their ItalExit and that people will understand the true value of the Union. However, the EU has a HUUUGE (as Boris would put it down, like Bluuueee) deficit in communication. It must communicate the benefits of the Union and its futile costs.

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