Article from EMStaffs.UK

Publication date: 2022-11-26

Title: New and prospective UK trade deals swamped by damage from walking away from UK-EU trade deal

Subtitle: The long term damage to UK GDP of tearing up our EU trade deal is enormous - according to the Government's own figures

Author: Cliff Mitchell



Ben Chu, Economics Editor at BBC Newsnight, presented a superb analysis of the UK's post-Brexit trade deals, contrasted with the reduction to long-run Gross Domestic Product (GDP)  due to Brexit.

Following our exit from the EU, the UK has signed many trade deals but the majority of these simply carry over the deals we had as EU members, so offer no additional benefit to the UK economy.

The new trade deals we have signed with Australia, Japan and New Zealand will, according to the Department for Trade and Industry's (DTI) own impact assessments, deliver only marginal additions to GDP of 0.08%, 0.07% and 0.03% respectively.



Potential new trade deals with India and USA have been widely trumpeted but the high end estimates from the Government's own DTI again offer only small benefits to the UK economy,

Taken together the new and potential trade deals based on the most optimistic projections may deliver a GDP contribution of £14.2 billion. This is a significant contribution but needs to be considered in the context of the reduction to long-run GDP caused by withdrawing from the UK-EU trade deal (single market and customs union) estimated by the Office of Budget Responsiblity (OBR) to be a GDP reduction of £115 billion.

Despite all the hype around new trade deals the reality is the GDP damage caused by Brexit exceeds £100 billion. This really matters - GDP is a measure of the UK's prosperity and the better the country is doing, the better off we all are; a hit on our GDP of this magnitude makes us all worse off, now and into the future. We are all poorer because of Brexit, and that's based on the govenment's own figures.