UK exports to EU slashed by 68% since Brexit
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
So, I too went with a German company.
Seems most of their bikes components aren't UK sourced (so there is a tariff), which isn't surprising let's be honest.
That being said any bike I've bought in the UK in the past 20 years has also been subject to similar tariffs, owing to Japanese/Taiwanese components.
Brexit has consumed the UK for the last 5 years with it's totally inwards looking activity.
COVID was a black swan event that will be bad for this generations outcomes. Brexit was totally avoidable but will have much the same lingering suppression of economic activity.
[0] newspaper articles, so the Michael Crichton [1] amnesia effect applies
[1] Michael Crichton came up with it and called it the “Gell-Mann Amnesia effect” because “by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have”.
I'm not an expert but afaik we're still in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis during which virtually every country in the west contracted insane amount of debt to save their economies, and this is exactly what we're doing again right now. I have my doubt any of this will be "mostly gone" in a few years, more like we're going to pay for it over the next X generations
https://theconversation.com/the-uk-governments-covid-spendin...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/uk-government-de...
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-warns-countries-to-watch-...
https://globalnews.ca/news/7318316/us-debt-coronavirus-excee...
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-fiscal-cbo-idUSKCN26D0CW
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-economy-was-laden-with-...
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/06/business/us-debt-deficit-...
I think we need to move away from that construct. If we today are burdening future generations, the proper description is that they will pay, not us. The people saddled with these debts are not alive today. They did not ask for this. They did not consent to owe anything. It is little wonder that revolutions are generally run by young people. It would be very interesting to see how many of these multi-generational debt structures result in profound instability, but sadly nobody alive today will be around to see these decisions. In short: imho no country should take on debts that have no hope of repayment within a single lifetime.
Germany paid the last of its WWI reparations in 2010... roughly a century after the war. Even that was within a theoretical single lifetime.
If you have an economy with zero slack (meaning 0% unemployment) then adding more debt does increase the amount of work that has to be done in the future. In practice this means that the least profitable work will not get done and a backlog of work starts piling up. This is not a problem in practice because of technological progress and the subsequent rise in productivity.
Debt does become harmful if it is spent wastefully.
Financing consumer spending is a pretty good example. Since you do not expect to net a greater return in the future the debt is just an additional fee that provides no meaningful value compared to having the money in your bank account before spending it.
Getting a mortgage to buy an existing house can also be wasteful if there is a housing shortage (=more residents than housing). You're supposed to spend that money on building a new house or condo. The large difference between market rate housing and construction cost is not a flaw. It's a financial incentive for construction companies to build more housing. You just have to let them build.
Using debt to finance a war is also extremely wasteful. If you lose the war your economy will no longer be able to support the debt.
Oh _we_ will too. More taxes, less pensions, more and more privatization of public entities, moving the retirement age up a few years ever decades, &c. the same shit they've been pulling all over Europe for the last 50 years basically
> They did not ask for this. They did not consent to owe anything.
Most of _us_ neither, only the elite/people in charge asked for it. It doesn't benefit the lower 90% of any countries' population.
BREXIT will unfortunately have an impact for much longer. The UK was a place I dreamed about living in. English-speaking, great quality of life, weather is pretty mild compared to where I currently am, and, most importantly, open borders with the EU.
Now the UK does not even register as an option.
This is just me, but I’m sure there are others in the same boat, and as a young Brit you just had a door shut in your face. Not to mention the impact on business that’s going to affect British workers within the UK.
It seems unlikely that we’re going to see a larger case of shooting oneself in the foot anytime soon.
I guess it is because the folks outside big cities never had a chance to interact with the immigrants and see the value they add to the society, rather than seeing them as a threat. It is quite sad :(
This begs the question: Would it have been as bad as Brexit to restrict worker movements a little more? I would suggest that such restrictions could have even had an overall benefit if done properly. It's just that Germany desperately wanted those cheap workers.
tl;dr: Nobody wants to become a truck driver anymore, even with improving salaries. Higher qualifications and better working conditions might solve the problem in the future.
In the meantime we still need drivers from eastern europe.
They're more than happy to charge thousands to qualified Eastern/Southern European to get them to come here and pocket high salaries and relatively cheap cost of living / taxes (the other place that compares in EU is Switzerland, but it's much more expensive).
Also, they didn't want to pay for poorer countries that will never get their economy together.
The UK was one of the few net contributors to the EU.
"They didn't want unspecialised poor immigrants from Eastern/Southern Europe" -> the fact is that they were getting a lot of graduated/high specialized immigrants from southern Europe as well.
A large aging population of post war baby boomers unhappy that younger generations are more liberal and different looking voted in a hardline anti immigrant admin.
Just like in the UK, a very large fraction of youth is very much against "leave".
I expect this to play out interestingly in the next 5-10 years when younger generations wrest political power from the baby boomers. I fully expect "millennials revenge" with a hard left turn eand forced generational wealth transfer using higher estate and property taxes
> some things are better off the way they are
doesn't follow from this
> Older people are naturally more conservative
Today's youth grew up with the dotcom bubble, financial crisis, 9/11, and COVID. They're far poorer with less opportunity than prior generations had. The government has failed them and they want change.
This is pushing younger generations hard left, and I don't think it's going to change. Most of the "conservativizing" life events like home ownership and building a family are being delayed or just never happening. Today's mellenials and gen z will likely lean democrat till they die.
There's also a social theory that older generations lean conservative because the conservative movement dominated their youth, not because they became that way with age. Today's boomers grew up during a ~20 year streak of conservative dominance. Today's youth are the opposite, it's yet to be seen what this will do to political beliefs.
Despite this, there's a increasingly liberal trend: spending, taxes and inflation keep raising, no matter the party.
Another theory is that youth are not going through conservatizing life events like marriage or home ownership because they've been screwed by so many economic disasters. It's hard to argue against this theory, the question is how much of an effect this will have long term.
Yet another theory is more obvious. The anti immigration and anti gay policies of conservatives are wildly unpopular among those under 45. Some estimates I've seen are that less than 25% support either. The younger generations are also less religious, more urban, and more ethnically diverse. All traits that tend to increase left leanings.
I personally doubt school had much of an impact. Educators have been left leaning for centuries. I think it's used as an excuse by the conservative party in the US unwilling to admit their policies are unpopular for more based reasons.
I agree with you that deficit spending has become bipartisan. The fiscal conservatism that once defined Republicans is more of a libertarian aim now. Again I think this will play out in an interesting way. Without fiscal conservativism the Republicans are left with religious and cultural conservativism which are both wildly unpopular among younger generations.
I keep reading this and it's just not true. The vast majority of young Brits go to work or study in the USA/Canada/Australia/NZ, by far, and they don't have the EU's "freedom of movement".
Several of my friends worked and studied in Europe before the UK signed the Maastricht treaty in 1992 and it wasn't a problem for them. If you're determined to move countries, which is a significant undertaking, you'll do it regardless of whatever extra perceived barriers there are.
I keep reading that they expect 1/3 of people to lose their jobs when furlough ends. The goverment is now suggesting companies move warehouse (and jobs) to the EU. The increase in the costs of importing into the UK will raise prices with people who are going to have less money. Orders coming from the EU will drop massively even for those with EU warehouses because, how do I know if they have one? I've literally made sure to avoid any UK business because I know I'll have to pay extra taxes when it arrives.
And I know people who voted leave who instantly regretted it and only voted leave as a protest vote. "We wanted to give them a scare" was how it was explained to me. So basically. While some pople are still 100% for a hard brexit, I don't think the majority of the nation even wanted to leave the EU 3 years after the vote. And when it cames to the general elections, no major party went with the anti Brexit campaign which seemed nuts. The politcal elite wanted Brexit and the poor will pay the most.
The UK has had two general elections since the 2016 vote. If the electorate thought it was the single most important issue and that we should remain, the UK wouldn't have left.
TL;DR, there was no real anti-Brexit party other than the dominating SNP.
> This lead to Johnson hiding in a fridge. The UK was that anti-Brexit that for the main pro-Brexit party to win they had to hide in a fridge on live TV to avoid talking about Brexit.
I just looked that up. It appears he was visiting a milk distribution company of some sort on his campaign when he was approached by a live TV crew who asked for an interview. He was then led into part of the facility by an employee. Truly compelling stuff!
The SNP basically dominated. Green? They're not a major party. And Labour's policy was ???, I honestly can't remember, but we all knew they were pro-Brexit. If Labour hadn't repeatedly shot themselves in the foot they would have done way better. Nevermind if they went hard on anti-Brexit, they would have done way better. I'm not 100% on this but I believe if you look at the stats, it was basically labour and centeral voters stayed home. And there was no real, and real is important here, altvernative. Many smaller parties splitting the vote wasn't ever going to get anywhere.
> I just looked that up. It appears he was visiting a milk distribution company of some sort on his campaign when he was approached by a live TV crew who asked for an interview. He was then led into part of the facility by an employee. Truly compelling stuff!
He was led into a fridge where he then stayed until the broadcaster moved on. Instead of his handlers telling the employee, hold on a sec, he's on live TV and this is a great chance to address the nation. They let him be lead into a fridge... And as a paid up member of the SNP, I would like to thank the tories for putting Mr Johnson in power. He's doing wonders for the SNP's cause!
I think it’s just one of those superlative treadmills.
The divisions on Brexit also run through both major parties, and Labour had quite a bad offering and spooked many people by being so much on the left (they had they worst defeat in 40 years in the last election, which is telling) and in any case they went for Brexit so people had no actual alternative on that issue as the Lib Dems were not seen has credible and as having any chance.
All in all I think it is difficult to draw clear conclusions based on the last general elections. Personally I think positions did not change much since the referendum (i.e. small majority for Brexit overall).
If your intention was to refute my argument that first-past-the-post doesn't accurately capture voters' opinions, you failed.
I'm in complete agreement that FPTP is a terrible system, and does a miserable job capturing voters opinions. It does so even when there are many extra parties available. (The LibDems were, after all, part of a governing coalition just five years ago.)
The problem is coming up with a significantly better system. The UK is in this mess because of a direct vote that didn't really measure voters' opinions, either.
The entire thing was a clusterf### that should never have happened. All voting systems are bad even in the best of cases, and this was far from the best of cases. Good luck living with it.
I still think it will end in either a disaster or some kind of rejoining of EU, possibly under a different name. But of course we’ll see.
So, like any other election?
The difference here is that both main parties supported Brexit, as opposed to having 2 opposing streams of nonsense.
There was a referendum in 2016 and a general election in 2019 which the Conservatives won in a landslide. The notion that there was a major swing in opinion in that timeframe is simply absurd. Pro-Brexit political parties don't win landslide victories in such circumstances.
Nicholas Taleb himself is “irritated” whenever the coronavirus pandemic is referred to as a "black swan" (https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-is...).
> There is a notion that the EU is punishing us. That our exports have to jump through more hoops than e.g. Norwegian products.
> This is what we agreed to. What we wanted. We didn't opt for the Norway model (e.g. alignment).
> This is not punishment, this was our choice.
That to me seems to say that this is self-inflicted, not something that the EU as a group inflicted on the UK. Not to dismiss the idea that UK is leaving the EU, not that the EU is kicking out UK.
So I guess when it comes to "how much blame the EU deserves for this", it seems the answer is "none".
I think that was the point the parent post was trying to make.
I'd even extend it to any country in the world, let the customer decide if the want to buy from China or from the UK
But then, you need a supranational body of elected officials to jointly control that regulation body, by passing legislation.
But then, you need an executive body that sets the agenda of the legislative body. And some judiciary mechanisms to handle transgressions to the laws and regulations coming from all these organs.
And then... you basically end up with something pretty similar to the EU as we know it.
(I'm not saying the EU is perfect, mind you. Just that they didn't create such a complex collection of institutions just "for the lulz")
But you are absolutely right that Brexit people are treating the exact things they dismissed as Project Fear as if it was a punishment. I’d personally witnessed this happening even before the referendum, in a conversation which went:
Him: “Brexit will be fine because the EU will give us a good deal”
Me: “No”
Him, shouting: “That proves we should leave!”
I almost wish I’d had a camera running at the time. I am well aware how mad it sounds.
https://www.avalara.com/vatlive/en/vat-services/fiscal-repre...
There are tendencies in several members to leave the EU or at least get rid of a few of the treaties. That means that leaving the EU in any really beneficial way for the UK would be strengthening the "leave" position in other members. And while the UK alone leaving is bad, more members leaving would be far worse.
Then there is the topic of the UK rebate and the UK's special role in several treaties. The EU has always had to pamper the UK and the UK gave nothing but grief in return. It would have been political suicide for the EU leadership to give any impression of continuing to pamper the Brits in the Brexit treaties. Also, beneficial status for a non-member would weaken the EU position in treaties with other non-members such as Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, etc.
And then there is the problem of the UK being not really one country but a haphazard agglomeration of several territories. While Great Britain is somewhat uniform, Northern Ireland is special. There are several reasons for treating it in a special way in the Brexit treaty, like a looming civil war, a possible Irish veto, a possible smuggling route into the EU market. But it was clear from the start that this would hugely complicate matters. Same for Gibraltar and the channel Islands, French and Spanish vetoes looming, etc.
I won't be surprised if the Brexit treaties don't hold forever. If the UK feels the squeeze of non-forthcoming trade with the rest of the world and diminishing trade with the EU, a more aligned status like the Norway/Switzerland model is possible. And I guess there will be a realignment of Northern Ireland and Gibraltar in some way, either towards a more unified UK or towards a weakened UK and Spanish/Irish unity, depending on what kind of hit the respective nations will take during COVID and the next few years.
But from an internal EU point of view, the current Brexit treaty is the farthest the EU could have gone.
I think as soon as Brexit pinches for good, NI and Scotland, both of which voted to remain in the EU, are out. Let’s just hope there isn’t another civil war in it.
1. https://www.ft.com/content/bbf2a097-37ff-42ea-8b22-c5662f0ae...
2. https://www.gov.scot/publications/export-stats-scotland-2018...
I don’t think the Irish arrangement is workable in practice. It’s trying to fit a square peg in a keg of dynamite. The Irish Protocol effectively puts it outside the British economic zone, since trade with Britain is effectively import and export, going thru customs and enormous red tape. Meanwhile, Ireland proper is just across the field.
I think Northern Ireland will make it to its centenary but not much beyond.
The UK has far greater trade with the rest of the EU than with the rest of the world, so it would be in their interest to remain in the Single Market and Custom Union.
I've always found it quite funny when English make this argument about Scotland. Particularly as the last independence referendum was won by the unionist side with a razor-thin margin, under the premises that the way for Scotland to stay in the EU was to stay in the UK. How is it that English nationalists are allowed to be unreasonable, but Scottish should not?
But how would you do otherwise if one of the parties does not want any regulatory alignment and is barely cooperative? There was an easy way of solving this, which the British chose to ignore because they were not Norway.
But of course, this is the Guardian - they know their audience, they know who they're talking to and aren't too interested in persuading someone from outside their half of the bubbleverse.
> Trade experts said part of the reason for the sharp fall in exports was the coincidence of Brexit and the pandemic. But several heads of trade bodies fear worse is to come.
...with more information to follow.
Also attempts to find alternate markets can be hampered as business people can't travel easily to visit potential new markets for their products.
(as pointed out elsewhere on thread) you could assume that having both at once allows the government to blame all economic issues on covid...
It shows November 2020 car exports as £2.4B (= $3.3B).
In 2018 total car exports was $43.4B = ~$3.6B/month.
Judging from this I'd say Brexit had a huge impact, but it's admittedly a limited dataset.
- brexiteer position
If one hadn't lived through the last decade or so, you'd be convinced that this was a Monty Python sketch or Onion article.
And also, the reality is that one side is losing more than the other side. And it's the smaller side that loses more.
The UK success will be dependent on its capacity to attract capital (as it always was).
Being English speaking is great to attract American capital.
Being outside of European covid debt payments is another advantage.
The freedom to compete on taxation with the world will be another one.
And not on it's ability to trade with neighbours, both in goods such as fish and produce, and in services such and finance?
When you actually look at the metrics you do not actually see the EU as a whole performing better than the UK and definitely worse than the US and Australia.
For Swiss people old like me, we still remember the exact same misleading articles when Switzerland said NO to Europe in 1992.
Switzerland had to adapt and is going fine today (minus covid). Hopefully UK will do the same.
So while Switzerland is doing fine, they are, at least when it comes to trade, borders and certain security measures like weapons controls, very much a second class member. I'm quite sure that is the opposite of what the Brexiteers intended, at least in my interpretation of their aims.
I'm sure there are also old Germans around who remember the price increases when switching from DM to €. These kinds of things are complicated.
I'm also not sure if these articles are supposed to be pro-EU fear-mongering, or simply a wake-up call to people in the UK to deal with the consequences of Brexit and "adapt"?
They had a only-in-a-lifetime chance to start from a scratch with their regulatory framework governing exports.
They should have replaced the EU captive market they were about to lose, with sufficient trade deals with the rest of the world so that when the time came, they would have had a much stronger negotiating with the EU. They would have had a healthier economy right before COVID, too.
Instead of hunting around the world for deals and getting their industry free rein to produce more and export away, they wasted their entire time bickering with the EU ...who was happy to sit tight and let the UK take the blame.
I guess when you know that politicians were in charge, you can easily assume nothing productive would come out of it.
- the official position of the man who went on to be elected PM on the basis he'd deliver a harder brexit than the other guy.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/06/23/eu-diplomats...
The store was 90% empty. No more fresh products, and mostly just leftovers of other products since Brexit. Feels so weird.
It seems that what EU (federation of participating countries) and USA (federation of participating states) practices of major trade blocs are not unlike the old empires, but the age of empires namely Imperial China, Byzantine, Mughal and Ottoman probably fare much better with their openness to trades.
The trade blocs as we know today was started by the Hanseatic League of the Holy Roman Empire that is neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire [1].
The granularity of it all varied, usually trade in Central Europe was regulated differently by each city, so you had to pay your dues when crossing the city gates. Others had larger territories, there you had to pay at the border crossings in addition to each city. Oh, and not trading in a city because of taxes? Big no-no, only cities had the right of market, meaning you got in big trouble for that.
I would suggest even the most restrictive trade policy today is more free than in the empires you enumerated. There is only a difference in sophistication of the rules, because nowadays there are far more varied goods and that "unnecessary" stuff like consumer protection.
For the rest of the world's empires the arrangement are more sophisticated than that namely Imperial China, Byzantine, Mughal and Ottoman. Most of these empires works like the current trade blocs, and the members of the empires pay taxes to their master [1][2]. Those smaller autonomous states or countries who are not directly under the empires most of the times pay tributary "protection taxes" or Arabic "jizya" where they becomes vassal countries/states of the bigger empires [3]. One of common examples are the Dubrovnik in Croatia which was under Ottoman protection for about 500 years! [4]. At its peak it rivals The City of Venice and this is only one famous examples of a major city not directly under a particular empire but flourished under the protection. I can provide more examples but I hope you get the points.
This arrangement is something like countries not belongs USA but in which under NAFTA trade blocs. This thriving ancient port cities can be like Taiwan today and Taiwan is probably probably moving towards this exact direction [5].
Interestingly since Holy Roman Empire (HRE) is not technically an empire, Hanseatic League of HRE based countries initiated the trade blocs among themselves to emulate a trading under one unified empire. As I mentioned previously this is the basis of our current trade blocs.
You also claimed the non-existence of any kind of protection along the trade routes. This is not particularly true since the Imperial China has extensive guard posts along the the Silk Routes and the distance between them is reportedly one "marhalah" or around 45 km meaning that a horse can run without stopping between these two guard posts. If you like this is the earlier version of the Pony Express since they also used the posts as messengers to deliver the important news (e.g. emperor has died) to the Generals/officials far away from the center of the empire. The Islamic empires also have this similar arrangement and they called this temporary resting places for travellers/traders as "Waqaf". After time some of these Waqafs became large cities [6]. Obviously this arrangement is not security foolproof (similar to today) and they introduced and made popular the concept of "sakk" or "cheque" (meaning contract document) for deferred payment to avoid carrying gold/cash for the traders along the Silk Routes [7].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_conquered_by_th... [2]Port-Cities in the Ottoman Empire, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40241274 [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal_state [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrovnik [5]https://www.bilaterals.org/?taiwan-says-trade-deal-would-sho... [6]https://muslimheritage.com/mega-cities-on-the-silk-road/ [7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque
You are contradicting yourself (and historic evidence) in claiming that the empires you named are "unified" in any way. The farther (as in, a few days ride) away from the capital you get, the less unified they get, provinces are governed by king-like governors with quite some autonomy, farther out vasall states had to pay tributes and submit to imperial authority, but were autonomous. The Chinese even made it into a world model and philosophy. Regarding trade, you did not point out any imperial mandate unifying that. There was only enlightened self-interest, because trade lined all pockets, so most generally allowed trade. But all the provinces, states and vasalls also had their own policies, taxes and regulations.
As for the protection between cities, there is also a very nice example in one of your named empires: Read up about the Thugee threat before the British got rid of it. There was no protection outside cities, period. Otherwise, even your example about cheques would have been unneccessary.
Nothing you said changes anything about my point, just reinforces it: The empires of old were more restrictive and less unified trade-wise than almost all current nations and trade blocks.
For examples nowadays can you bring physically huge amount of cash or gold across borders without being detained? In the empire of old you really can. One of the richest men ever existed in recorded history Mansa Musa, 14th century King of Mali has been reported to travel with tons of golds on the way to pilgrimage in Mecca because apparently his empire held half of world's gold resources at the time [1]. According to historians he so lavishly did he hand out gold in Cairo Egypt that his three months stay caused the price of gold to plummet in the region for 10 years, wrecking the economy for many years [2]. This is probably the main reason modern countries do not allow bringing along your stack of cash or gold in very large amount when you are travelling across borders.
Regarding your not-so-unified under the empire arguments, the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia will not be successful for 500 years (being a main port-city rival to The City of Venice no less) and will be really stupid to pay Ottoman tributary for 500 hundreds years! Additionally these port-cities such as Dubrovnik are autonomous and not even directly under the empire administration. I'd imagine the countries or states under the Ottoman empire will be even more integrated than that in term of taxations and contributions? It will be like asking UK to pay taxes/contributions for several hundreds years to EU even after the separation from the EU. Without a unified and strong empire you cannot do that even in today's world let alone in 16th century AD.