,
16 tweets,
5 min read
Read on Twitter
It’s very good news exports have grown, but trade is seasonal. For example, there are different harvest times. It was also in a period of serious Brexit uncertainty.
To fully understand our exports we should consider the full 12 month period.
(Thread)
To fully understand our exports we should consider the full 12 month period.
(Thread)
To do that, I’m going use the Department for International Trade’s own key statistics book. 
The value of exports to Non-EU countries was £350.0 billion in the 12 months ending March 2019, up 3.3% on the previous 12 months, while exports to the EU increased by 3.6% to £292.8 billion.
Goods exports to the EU increased by 5.5% in the 12 months ending March 2019, at a faster rate than exports to the Non-EU (up 2.8%)
Services exports to the Non-EU increased by 3.9% to £170.0 billion while services exports to the EU increased by 0.9% to £117.3 billion
Which might be good news for Brexit, because the rest of the world picked up the slack in this case, but nothing in policy has facilitated the non-EU exports, and we will be losing our ability to sell certain services after we leave that FTAs do not normally provide for.
(Although we were actually talking about goods exports, and I only included services because it would have omitted the part of the economy where our exports to the EU were being outperformed by the rest of the world.)
Because, as @DavidHenigUK says here with his own comment about the Facts4EU article, it’s easy to take figures out of context.
Rather than looking at the totals, people need to look at the substance.
Rather than looking at the totals, people need to look at the substance.
So let’s take a closer look, because if we look at the long term we can see that goods exports to the EU has grown significantly and it’s not helpful to lump everything else together because there are key markets.
Once you’re outside of those key markets, exports to the rest of the world aren't really growing that much.
Even during the Eurozone crisis we see the EU doing well against the other markets.
And we also see a similar shelf.
And just looking at those, someone may be tempted to say that China’s growth was incredible and we should focus on that, and again, we don't really have the substance.
nytimes.com/2019/07/14/bus…
nytimes.com/2019/07/14/bus…
We need to look at the substance, and that means our individual sectors, and when we look at those in terms of UK exports, we find that the competitiveness of 3 of the top 5 export industries are dependent on the customs union and/or the Single Market.
Which means we’re about to impair some of our best performing goods export sectors, and so while it's good that our exports are up, when we look at the drivers of that growth, it is actually not that great.
The lesson here is, like the claim that "90% of growth will happen outside of the EU", statistics in trade aren’t that helpful without a deeper understanding of what those figures represent.
/End
/End
