Poor Brexit outcomes

[jimbob]

According to an in-depth analysis by trade economists released this month, high-end UK manufacturing that feeds into EU supply chains is going to find itself being increasingly squeezed by the challenges of post-Brexit trade.

Nearly 50 per cent of UK manufacturing exports to the EU are so-called “intermediate” in nature, feeding components into EU supply chains that are then often exported onwards to the rest of the world as finished products.

[…]

The report by the Resolution Foundation said that UK global exports in the first three months of 2023 were still 17 per cent below the levels before the EU-UK trade deal came into force three years ago, and warned that the UK’s more advanced manufacturers would be supplanted by lower-productivity domestic manufacturing in the longer term.

It cited the UK auto industry’s recent struggles to attract investment to build the battery factories needed for the electric car revolution as a harbinger of the future challenges facing other high-value sectors, including machinery, chemicals and computer equipment manufacturing.

“Although these [EU-UK] supply chains will take time to disentangle, they will shrink the UK’s high productivity manufacturing — from chemicals to spacecraft — as they do,” the report warned.

With manufacturing accounting for nearly 50 per cent of UK exports, the report added that the structural shift would further contribute to the longstanding productivity crisis that has weighed on the UK economy since 2008.

“Policymakers need to face the choice over whether or not to stay part of EU supply chains, to support high productivity manufacturers, and they need to accept that doing so means addressing the EU border,” the report said.

UK lags behind the majority of G7 countries in goods exports. Chart showing the index of goods exports values for G7 countries in the following sectors. Vehicles Chemicals Other manufacturing Agri-food

[…]

“Nothing will disappear overnight, but chemical plants are 20-40 year investments and talking to people we work with in Europe, they see economic and political instability in the UK compared with the EU,” Mathers said.

A survey of US businesses this month by BritishAmerican Business, a transatlantic trade association, saw confidence in the UK slipping for the third consecutive year, with two-thirds of US businesses putting improving EU-UK trade relations among their top three priorities.

https://www.ft.com/content/2f99a9c3-507 ... 87a1ad6921

Yup. It's not *tariffs as such. but certainty of timely supply. A now-retired colleague was (as a fairly junior engineer) apparently the only person in Philips to have ever flown in Concorde on business. In order to prevent a line-stop with a US manufacturer.

[Brightonian]

Scouts' trip to Switzerland:
https://twitter.com/steve_way/status/16 ... 2459072512

[Martin Y]

Scouts' trip to Switzerland:
https://twitter.com/steve_way/status/16 ... 2459072512

For those of us w/o Twitter accounts, who can only read the first tweet, was it a roaring success now that we hold all the cards? I just bet it was.

[Gfamily]

Scouts' trip to Switzerland:
https://twitter.com/steve_way/status/16 ... 2459072512

For those of us w/o Twitter accounts, who can only read the first tweet, was it a roaring success now that we hold all the cards? I just bet it was.
[/quote]
They got there - but at a cost

Traversing Brexit.jpg (27.63 KiB) Viewed 1967 times

[temptar]

Nick Timothy to stand for election in Matt Hancock's constituency. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -safe-seat

Hancock had a 23000 majority. I assume that is kind of safe.

[EACLucifer]

Nick Timothy to stand for election in Matt Hancock's constituency. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -safe-seat

Hancock had a 23000 majority. I assume that is kind of safe.

Only a little bigger than Selby and Ainsty was.

[temptar]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -climbdown

You is keeping our CE mark.

[FlammableFlower]

Colour me unsurprised

[TimW]

Even the “Brexit opportunities minister” thought it was a waste of time, so I don't know how nuts you'd have to be to support it.

[shpalman]

I voted for Brexit for some reason! Now I obviously wish I didn't!

“All my luggage is checked at the airport, and in June two jars of delicious carciofini sott’olio (artichokes preserved in olive oil) were seized at the check-in. I got so mad.”

Maybe the part which explains why the f.ck she voted for Brexit in the first f.cking place is behind some pay wall. What the f.ck did she think it would achieve?

Oh and I didn't think it was ever allowed to actually sell stuff on, or maybe that just applied to things with duty on them like alcohol.

[nekomatic]

Oh and I didn't think it was ever allowed to actually sell stuff on, or maybe that just applied to things with duty on them like alcohol.

Inside the single market you can buy and sell whatever you want, surely, as long as you follow the general rules for buying and selling and paying tax (which is where the duty bit comes in) and all that jazz. That’s what a single market is.

Outside the single market it’s too dark to read my views on people this stupid.

[Woodchopper]

Oh and I didn't think it was ever allowed to actually sell stuff on, or maybe that just applied to things with duty on them like alcohol.

Inside the single market you can buy and sell whatever you want, surely, as long as you follow the general rules for buying and selling and paying tax (which is where the duty bit comes in) and all that jazz. That’s what a single market is.

Yes, there are laws for sales of specific goods like alcohol which in the UK needs a licence, and trade in some other goods will be covered by health and safety regulations. But other than that the point of the single market was that anyone could just buy and sell.

[Sciolus]

If it's stopped her flying between Manchester and southern Italy twenty times a year, it's a good result.

[JQH]

For Italy or the environment?

[Sciolus]

Yes.

[sTeamTraen]

I voted for Brexit for some reason! Now I obviously wish I didn't!

“All my luggage is checked at the airport, and in June two jars of delicious carciofini sott’olio (artichokes preserved in olive oil) were seized at the check-in. I got so mad.”

Maybe the part which explains why the f.ck she voted for Brexit in the first f.cking place is behind some pay wall. What the f.ck did she think it would achieve?

Oh and I didn't think it was ever allowed to actually sell stuff on, or maybe that just applied to things with duty on them like alcohol.

These stories are amusing in a grim kind of a way, but she seems to be under the delusion that if she personally had voted the other way, her life would be different. And indeed that kind of extends to the readers of such articles. The margin of victory for Leave was 1.27 million.

That said, I think it's interesting to speculate what would happen if the margin had been one vote, or 50 votes, across the whole of the UK. This is unlikely but could happen. Florida in 2000 was sufficiently close that the question of whether any individual ballot was valid had to be considered ("hanging chads", etc). Something similar could happen in France, say, with a presidential election, where there is no electoral college, only a popular vote. The advantage that France has is that ballots are counted in the polling station as soon as voting closes, with representatives of all candidates signing off to say that this is the true and fair number, which then gets passed up the chain.

[FlammableFlower]

Thing is, she was stupid and believed the don't look to closely, moon-on-a-stick promises that Vote Leave were pumping out. If she'd been able to actually think more carefully about it (and the consequences) and not vote how she did... how many others could have too?

It's all counterfactual dreaming though. We are where we are.

[shpalman]

today's National Rejoin March

Well it would have been nice if you'd campaigned before the referendum but still.

Link to the BBC's coverage:

[jimbob]

I've just looked at the export data at the OECD
https://data.oecd.org/trade/trade-in-go ... ator-chart

and plotted the quarterly value of goods exported - normalised to Q1-2016

OECD quarterly goods exported 2012-23.png (137.84 KiB) Viewed 1033 times

The UK isn't doing well compared to then, or indeed compared to before 2016

[shpalman]

https://twitter.com/fesshole/status/1707521828665672143

[jimbob]

FB_IMG_1696538377585.jpg (46.08 KiB) Viewed 861 times

I looked at the GDP growth since 2016 for the OECD.

Not stellar performance by the UK

[Brightonian]

Whenever I see one of these charts I immediately look to see where Ireland is. If it's at one of the extremes, I immediately think leprechaun economics and ignore.

[shpalman]

Screenshot_20231006-084226-01.jpeg (103.75 KiB) Viewed 819 times

[IvanV]

Whenever I see one of these charts I immediately look to see where Ireland is. If it's at one of the extremes, I immediately think leprechaun economics and ignore.

Certainly the Irish GDP data is very badly distorted for well-known reasons, but if you adjust the GDP of other countries in the same way, mostly it only moves it by 1-2%, not 50% like Ireland, and probably Luxembourg is similar. So in most cases GDP is a useful comparative metric, and it is worth looking at the rest and trying to understand it.

I expect the extreme Norwegian figure is due to the price of oil. China and Turkey are shown and unsurprisingly higher than most of Europe.

Quite a lot of the other countries at the right end of the tail are eastern EU countries who grow fast because they are catching up. Slovakia being at the other end of the table is an interesting story about that country, which seemed to be doing so well attracting inward investment 10 years ago, but has crunched of late. But that lot aside, and comparing with countries that are more UK's peers, why have Austria and Denmark done so well? And let's compare Britain particularly with France, Germany, NL, BEL, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Finland.

In fact Britain recently did a data review of its GDP and adjusted it up a bit. Other countries haven't done that, and a similar data review would probably have similar effects. So actually if anything I suspect that graphic overstates Britain's performance in comparison to others on a like-for-like basis.

In the end, we see we have clearly done worse than all of our peers. Even though Germany's economy is in a bit of a funk just now, still we have done worse than Germany. I think we knew that, but it is useful to have it confirmed.

[jimbob]

Whenever I see one of these charts I immediately look to see where Ireland is. If it's at one of the extremes, I immediately think leprechaun economics and ignore.

Certainly the Irish GDP data is very badly distorted for well-known reasons, but if you adjust the GDP of other countries in the same way, mostly it only moves it by 1-2%, not 50% like Ireland, and probably Luxembourg is similar. So in most cases GDP is a useful comparative metric, and it is worth looking at the rest and trying to understand it.

I expect the extreme Norwegian figure is due to the price of oil. China and Turkey are shown and unsurprisingly higher than most of Europe.

Quite a lot of the other countries at the right end of the tail are eastern EU countries who grow fast because they are catching up. Slovakia being at the other end of the table is an interesting story about that country, which seemed to be doing so well attracting inward investment 10 years ago, but has crunched of late. But that lot aside, and comparing with countries that are more UK's peers, why have Austria and Denmark done so well? And let's compare Britain particularly with France, Germany, NL, BEL, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Finland.

In fact Britain recently did a data review of its GDP and adjusted it up a bit. Other countries haven't done that, and a similar data review would probably have similar effects. So actually if anything I suspect that graphic overstates Britain's performance in comparison to others on a like-for-like basis.

In the end, we see we have clearly done worse than all of our peers. Even though Germany's economy is in a bit of a funk just now, still we have done worse than Germany. I think we knew that, but it is useful to have it confirmed.

Similar type of graph, but percentage growth in goods exported from Q1-2016 to Q2-2-23

20231006_OECDExportGrowth.png (134.42 KiB) Viewed 771 times