COLLAPSE OF UK EXPORTS TO THE UE

The dramatic reduction in exports of UK companies to the European Union is all due to the harmful effects of Brexit. Imports seem to suffer less, supported by the concessions in force, and if this were the reason for their extension?

Word of the British Office for National Statistics: in January, compared to the same month of 2020, exports from the UK to the EU fell by 40,7% and UK imports from the EU by 28,8%.

The 1,7% increase in British trade with the rest of the world has failed to offset the collapse of that with the EU. Overall, the UK’s global exports and imports fell by about a fifth, consolidating the biggest contraction in UK trade in over twenty years. The EU countries most affected by the drop in exports are France (-56,8%), Italy (-56,6%) and Germany (-49,2%). A study by the UK Trade policy Observatory at the University of Sussex brings this phenomenon back to the pandemic still in progress, to Brexit, to the accumulation of stocks carried out by companies in the last months of 2020, in fear of the effects of Brexit. Of course, the one-month results are not a sufficiently representative sample, but if the analysis is projected in the previous three years, the decline towards the EU appears even more marked (-46,5%).