What is it with remainers….guys, we’ve moved on, we are out, we are doing deals around the world, the Eu are just getting used to the rules and regulations to import to the U.K. that we have endured for the last year importing to the Eu. Let’s just get on with our lives and businesses……
Pete, that’s just not true. Amongst these awesome trade deals we are clinching, how many of them are new and don’t just replicate those we already had under the EU arrangements ?
The deal with the USA isn’t moving too fast and won’t even be discussed, as long as there is an implied threat to undermine the GFA. We hold a busted flush in that game due to our strategic mastermind’s blundering and hostile rhetoric.
Some really boring academic stuff below on trade deals. I’m sure the learned advocates and disciples of Brexit know all this kind of minutiae. Detail and strategy has been their strong point from the outset, so it is wholly irrational for us moaners to be worried…..not.
Hence in our application to economic relations, trade is reduced at an accelerating rate as the distance between trading partners increases. For example, consider two countries of equal size, one twice as far away as another. The non-linear distance effect means that for the host economy, trade with the further country will be one-quarter of trade with the closer.
If the distance is measured by miles between capital cities, then London to Paris is approximately 300 miles and London to Beijing is approximately 5000 miles. The gravity model implies that the distance effect will reduce trade between the UK and China, relative to that between the UK and France, by a factor of (16.6) squared, or around 277 times.
Thus the impact of distance much more than offsets the benefits of trading with larger (or faster growing) economies.
Is the UK locked into economic relationships dominated by geography? Can it reorient its trade and FDI patterns from the slower growing European economy to faster-growing markets in Asia, Latin America and Africa, as promised by the proponents of Brexit?
blogs.lse.ac.uk
Seriously though, this should be the part where you come in and tell us about how Brexit is going to be or is making our lives better. You won the vote and no one is talking about re-running it. We were promised numerous benefits...
