> Hopefully for the US they won't go in a similar crisis like the UK is going through...
Err.. do tell about the UK's larger crisis than US'?
Err.. do tell about the UK's larger crisis than US'?
I don't know how things panned out, but the discussions in the early days around Brexit were absolutely on par or even worse than what we're seeing in these two days of discussions around tariffs.
Regardless of contemporaneous comparisons, the up-thread comment I initially replied to suggested there was some ongoing worse 'crisis' in the UK than the current situation in the US, if they meant to refer to Brexit it was not clear at all, regardless of whether anyone things that's an ongoing worse situation. (Except that the fact it's not clear really suggests it isn't...)
'Pretty young' would imply maybe you haven't been voting for very long, and are likely under 25.
An under 25 year old today wouldn't have been able to have voted on the 2016 referendum anyway.
The UK voted for Brexit in 2016, but it was up to the UK itself to invoke it with the EU. They took almost 4 years to do it in January of 2020 after 4 years of arguing about it with a transition period and trade talks with the EU until the end of 2020. It wasn't a surprise and "no one knew how imports worked". Yeah people online made all sort of wild hyperbolic scenarios, but trade was unaffected until the end of 2020. There were shortages in the UK around that time, but I wonder if you remember what happened shortly after January 31st of 2020?
The prescription drug shortages is still a problem in the UK. It's not because no one still knows how imports work in the UK, 5 years after Brexit. It's because the overall imports and exports in the UK has been falling since Brexit. Because the UK economy hasn't been doing great. Brexit, COVID, and then Ukraine/Russian energy dependency came in a pretty bad time for the UK.
Oh, longer than that. Some transition arrangements are _still in practice in place_, for instance see https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-brexit-border-checks-dela... . Brexit is not done, yet; things will get worse before they get better.
Right now we're seeing the 0th order effects.
While estimates of the damage done by Brexit are of course very politically sensitive, nearly everyone agrees that some substantial damage has been done, particularly to trade and jobs (one estimate has the UK with _over 2 million_ fewer jobs today than it would otherwise have, Goldman Sachs says that the UK economy is 5% smaller than it ‘should’ be, etc etc)
GDP isn't everything and from the outside the UK feel like in a very bad place, but I wonder what's the metric that really captures that status. Inequalities aren't getting that much wider as well.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni...
Leaving the EU had no effect on the British economy. Not positive, not negative. Even the trade balance with the EU merely continued along its long term trend, so apparently the single market wasn't delivering any value in the end. The closest thing you can find to an economic impact was the currency dump that happened the moment the result was called, but the economy did fine in the post-referendum years and so those traders who panicked just took a bath and the currency recovered later. Not that a currency devaluation is such a bad thing for the UK anyway, its exports could use the help.
Even some non-economic impacts failed to materialize, in both directions. The UK rejoined the Horizon research programme (supposedly a "cherry" that would be lost), but also the reduction in immigration that voters were promised didn't happen either, in fact immigration went into overdrive.
A lot of people who support the EU don't realize any of this, partly because the news doesn't report on things that don't happen so they never hear about it. But mostly it's because they conflate predictions with reality. For example, there's someone saying in this thread that "the narrative was pretty catastrophic" followed by "I don't know how things panned out". And when I pointed out this lack of impact less than two weeks ago here, I got a reply that cited another pile of predictions as a refutation:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43469356
It's a systemic problem that crops up in other areas too. During COVID modeling predictions were regularly repeated as if they'd already happened, and you see the same mental slippage in climate change discourse. The line between "we think this might happen", "this will happen" and "this has already happened" blurs to nothing.
As a non-EU / non-UK reader I went searching for more detailed analysis after reading your post. The first detailed analysis I found was the UK Office for Budget Responsibility's Brexit Analysis. [1]
The OBR's analysis suggests outcomes like the following (all quoted from that assessment) that seem to suggest some degree of negative economic impact:
* The post-Brexit trading relationship between the UK and EU, as set out in the ‘Trade and Cooperation Agreement’ (TCA) that came into effect on 1 January 2021, will reduce long-run productivity by 4 per cent relative to remaining in the EU.
* Both exports and imports will be around 15 per cent lower in the long run than if the UK had remained in the EU.
[1] https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/the-economy-forecast/brexi...
That link is neither analysis nor reporting on outcomes. That's more predictions. This is the exact problem I'm talking about!
To analyze outcomes you must look at the actual data. There's a report that does so here but you can look up the raw data too if you prefer:
https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Perspectives_5...
From the summary:
"Contrary to initial concerns, Brexit has not had a major detrimental effect on UK–EU trade.
● Trade data doesn’t support the Office for Budget Responsibility’s claims that Brexit has caused significant negative impacts on the UK economy.
● Data from 2019 to 2022 indicates that the trade in both goods and services between the UK and EU hasn’t shown a discernible Brexit effect."
You can look up more recent numbers but the story hasn't changed.
I'd really like to understand the psychology of this phenomenon better. I don't mean this as any personal criticism because it's good that you're asking, but the fact that every time I bring this prediction/reality conflation up I get a rebuttal with more predictions in it is fascinating.
● The analysis you link to is exactly the same sort of analysis the OBR provides -- i.e. a synthesis of current and past data and updated projections of what that means looking ahead
● The OBR report links to detailed "Economic and fiscal outlook" (EFO) data that includes the actual data the conclusions are based on. I haven't tried to look at the linked data for many of the analyses in the OBR report, but for those I have I find data in the cited EFO documents that seems to backup the statements made. For example, Box 2.6 of the March 2022 EFO report: https://obr.uk/box/the-latest-evidence-on-the-impact-of-brex...
● I gather that the "Institute of Economic Affairs" (IEA) is a long running right wing think-tank/advocacy group -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Economic_Affairs
● The director of the IEA was apparently recorded by an undercover reporter telling funders that his organization was in "the Brexit influencing game" [1]. Why should I thus trust that the IEA isn't trying to spin Brexit outcomes to their funders advantage? This applies to the government too of course, but many of those OBR/EFO reports seem to have been prepared when the Conservatives were in power.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/29/rightwing-t...
That the IEA is right wing is neither here nor there, because the statements it makes are factual and true. If for some reason you suspect foul play you can just look up the data yourself instead of digging up irrelevant quotes (the Guardian is also very much in the Brexit influencing game, so what?)
I'll do the work for you. Here's a report from Parliament with the relevant data up to 2023. See the graph in section 3.1
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-...
That's trade. For other economics indicators there are many sources. I like TradingEconomics.com
Since you were so kind as to "do the work" for me, I'll also "do the work" for you (LOL!):
● From the text and tables in 3.1 (text from the report included below) I take it we both come to the same conclusion that post-Brexit the EU has lost ~£40 billion in export trade?
● To be clear how I'm getting that number -- NET LOSS in Exports for 2023 vs values cited for period 2017-2019: ~£20 billion to EU + ~£20 billion non EU
Is £40 billion a little or a lot? From the text below that seems to be about a 10% hit on exports.
How much is attributable to Brexit vs other factors (e.g. impact of COVID) really is the domain of forecasting and analysis, which you seem uncomfortable with. So perhaps we'll leave it there. EDIT: For readers who are interested in the performance of forecasting models, the OBR includes an analysis of the performance of their models here: https://obr.uk/box/how-are-our-brexit-trade-forecast-assumpt...
--
From the Parliamentary report "Statistics on UK trade with the EU":
> UK goods exports to the EU have not recovered to pre-Brexit levels. Goods exports to the EU exceeded £170 billion in 2017, 2018 and 2019 but have not done so in any calendar year since and were £153 billion in 2023 (see table below).
> It is worth noting that UK exports of goods to the EU were growing quite slowly before Brexit and the pandemic, being only 9% higher in 2019 than 2010 in real terms
> Goods exports to non-EU countries also remain below pre-Brexit levels. These exceeded £180 billion in 2017, 2018 and 2019 but have been below £170 billion in every calendar year since then. They were £162 billion in 2023.
--
EDITS: added some clarification re: source of export values; wording of text.
But to your last comment, post-Brexit the UK is pretty significantly under-performing the rest of the G7 in terms of goods trades (prior to Brexit the UK seemed to mirror the G7 average).
https://obr.uk/box/how-are-our-brexit-trade-forecast-assumpt...
Interestingly, in terms of Services trade the UK seems to be slightly over-performing.
If you want to know more about the current situation in the UK I would recommend this video [1]. His channel is amazing for geopolitical content.
- The UK has one of the worst homelessness problems in Europe, with about 1 in 50 Londoners experiencing homelessness.
- The UK economy stagnated for 10 years following 2008, resulting in a "lost decade"
- The median disposable income in the UK was slightly lower than the US and Norway before the GFC by 6-8%, not it's 16-20% behind.
IDK if I'd call this a crisis, i.e. people aren't rioting in the streets. That said, this is not the direction you want to be moving in as a developed country. The trend of people in formerly dominant countries electing leaders who keep making stupid own goals (increasing economic inequality, Brexit, gutting the NHS, gutting US foreign aid, tariff-pocalypse) is very worrying.
US population is around 340 000 000, 770 000 homeless.
UK population is around 68 000 000, 354 000 homeless. (Possibly calculated more inclusively.)
That's 0.23 % and 0.52 %.
(Numbers from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Kin... or more specifically from a govt department and a homelessness charity. The US figure "does not include those staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own".)
But also, uh, you're wrong too! Your numerator for the UK figure is actually an estimate for homeless people in England, while your denominator includes the whole UK.
I do, but the principal reason I didn't say that is that I had no idea it's what the commenter I replied to was referring to.
'Brexit' feels mostly completely irrelevant / not a topic of concern or debate since at least the beginning of the pandemic five years ago. The vote was almost a decade ago. 'If bdelmas thinks it's like Brexit, they could just say that', to paraphrase your own comment.
That is not really relevant anyway, the up-thread suggestion was that there was some current ongoing crisis more significant than anything happening in the US. That user didn't even mention Brexit, but if that is what they meant, no, I assure you it's predominantly Trump and tax year end stuff in our news.
If there are any crises in my UK news, they're in the Ukraine, Israel, USA, and perhaps Greenland & Canada by extension. To the extent there's crisis in the UK that I'm aware of, it's the same USA-inflicted event that the rest of the world's dealing with too.
How is this related to brexit? Well, it's mentioned several times in that page, but here: > Brexit has permanently diminished trade efficiency in the UK...weakening the UK’s international competitiveness.....intensified the UK’s longstanding productivity issues...imposed lasting structural constraints on productivity ...Brexit’s negative impact on productivity is enduring and structural. Additionally, Brexit has produced effects akin to a negative supply-side shock...An analysis conducted by NIESR colleagues, published in November 2023, suggested that UK business investment could have been about 12.4 per cent higher in 2023 if Brexit did not happen.
https://niesr.ac.uk/blog/five-years-economic-impact-brexit
Funnily enough, one thing that gets called out a lot is the rising wealth inequality that allows the shrinking group of well-off types to be completely ignorant of the worsening conditions at the bottom. You must be doing ok for yourself - but I am genuinely curious what kind of news sources you follow that you are not aware of the very serious levels of poverty and fear rising around the country, and the economic troubles underlying them.
The USA hasn't done any of that, so the situation at this stage isn't the same.
Weeks after Brexit happened, when Covid started, EU governments quickly moved their focus to the pandemic. Since then, they've continued to tell Britain they aren't interested in reopening discussions so soon after new treaties were signed.
That's changed slightly with Russia/Ukraine/Trump, as the UK has positioned itself carefully between the USA and the rest of NATO.
All that time though, it remains a topic of debate in Britain since they haven't seen any of the promised benefits of Brexit. Some things have got worse, but I'd say it's generally a problem of stagnation, compared to improvements in comparable neighbouring countries.
I think if I were American I would be longing for the day that <insert Trump thing> 'remains a topic of debate because we haven't seen the promised benefit of it'!