Money Macro & Markets - Brexit and China heavy analysis

Put another way, for every £1.00’s worth of imports shipped from the EU, the UK sends back only 60p in exports whereas the return in the rest of the world is 80p – a ratio a full third better. In services, even though Britain does manage to achieve a £1.31 inflow for every £1.00 laid out to its Continental neighbours that is still a full third less than the £1.91 it secures in the wider world. Taken together, what we see here is that a purchase of £1.00 made in Europe is offset by only 76p in sales whereas the ledger sees a welcome £1.11 receipt elsewhere.

That much-vaunted ‘access to the single market of 500 million people’ – with its concomitant denial of better terms of access to the multiple markets of the other 7 billion people who comprise them in their turn – hardly seems so compelling when viewed in this light. At the very least, this should fortify the Brexiteers in their resolve not to accept too large a manifest of non-economic baggage from the EU as the price for any extension of its current ‘privileges’.​

Excerpt from the bigger, more in-depth Money Macro & Markets by Sean Corrigan.​