Sunday 24 July 2016

Trade


Overheard while watching the TV programme, Full Steam Ahead.

Hay: "Do you think the Brexiteers will want to do away with the railways?"

Someone on the radio yesterday was trumpeting the 'fact' that the UK is one of the world's leading trading nations. We're 9th in the list of gross export value, which isn't so bad, but 33rd on the list of exports per capita, which is worrying. More worrying still, we're 2nd in the list of highest trade deficits; only the USA has a higher deficit.


Once the redundancies from the loss of confidence kick in, then the exports per capita figure could improve, unless there's a swathe of company closures too, which seems highly likely given order books are at their lowest since the global recession.

One hopes the fall in sterling will do something to counter the deficit, as the Brexiteers are maintaining, but the Brexiteers also maintain the fall is temporary, so not much hope in the long run.

Seems to me that Brexiteer logic is to translate everything, no matter how dire, as a positive and a sign of a bright and rosy Utopian future.


1 comment:

Steve Borthwick said...

Oh for goodness sake CB, are you still banging on about this, you just need to use the same rigorous economic analysis that the Brexit people do. It's easy, just smear your head with Vaseline and jam it up your rectum, be sure to wedge it firmly as far as you can, from there you also get a good view of the rosy commercial future we’ll all have selling snooker tables to Bangladesh.