1/ Dear Dept for Int Trade and Dr Liam Fox. With respect, we are about to leave the nearest and largest free trade area.
2/ You will have seen the evidence that nearness and size is a very important and unchanging determinant of trade.
3/ Your staff will no doubt have concluded, as the rest of us, have, that there is no possibility of replacing the trade lost by departing the single market, even if FTAs as deep as the one we had are negotiated.
4/ Like us, you'll have realised that that is true because the other potential FTAs are with partners a long way away, and small.
5/ You will also be familiar with the history of the depth of those FTAs, and deduce from that that nothing even nearly as deep as the SM will be negotiated.
6/ So not only gravity, but shallowness of the future FTAs will mean that this trade policy you sound optimistic about, actually describes a somewhat impoverished future.
7/ The history of FTAs, and research on determinants of trade flows, is as known to you as us, so this does call into question the meaning of your tweet.
8/ Your tweet might not be false if it were meant to refer to a comparison of a world in which FTAs were negotiated, compared with one in which we depart the single market with no such deals. 'More pounds'.
9/ I might be reading this rather harshly, but, with respect, the call to 'create a trade policy' jars rather with the impression that the UK was itself instrumental in creating the single market.
10/ You will doubtless struggle to get as deep FTAs as you can with our other very distant and small potential partners.
11/ We have to hope that you don't take as much time signing agreeing these less-deep FTAs than did past parties seeking the same, though without any evidence as to why it should be easier this time.
12/ And we will wonder what you make of the prospect of needing to sacrifice regulatory autonomy for these new agreements, the very thing you hoped to gain by leaving our current trading home.
13/ You must no doubt also be hoping these other partners have not studied the trade literature that you have read closely, and so don't figure that being small and far away, the UK is not a priority.
14/ As a postcript, you'll excuse the confusion many of us experience when you tweet from your account reports of the Economists4Brexit analysis claiming a windfall from Brexit.
15/ Like us, you'll be aware that this was comprehensively rebutted by, among others, the CEP - a link [h/t @tomashirstecon for the reminder] here: cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/…
16/ If you were tweeting the Ec4Brexit report in support of it, it would be interesting to know how you defend the analysis against those critiques?
17/ Many of us would also be curious to know whether you embrace the conclusions that agriculture and manufacturing would/should be decimated by the kind of Brexit envisaged and urged?
18/ The economics team in your ministry no doubt has a view on whether the overwhelming majority of economists lining up behind the CEP are right, or Ec4Brexit. We'd be very curious to hear what they think.
19/ There are examples where vast literatures are debunked by great leaps forward in analysis, so if you are supportive of Ec4Brexit, it would be an important contribution to global trade econ to share with us the insights you must have had.
20/ Such a debunking would be shattering, undermining the case for TPP and NAFTA; all those countries deluded into thinking they should prioritise lowering barriers with their neighbours.
