While the government trumpets the Australian trade deal being agreed in principle, we shouldn’t forget that it’s worth very little in trade terms. According to the UN's Comtrade database, our exports to Australia are worth about $5 billion (£3.5bn) a year. Exports to Holland, were worth nearly five times as much despite the old colonial ties and Holland having a population of 17 million compared to Australia's 24 million. In trade gravity matters
According to the Australian government website their major imports from the UK are motor vehicles, medicaments and alcoholic beverages. The tariff on UK cars is 5% so not huge and I assume the shipping costa are pretty high anyway. This is hardly likely to boost car exports by a significant amount.
The major impact - if there is one - is likely to be on the UK agricultural sector fighting lower priced imports. And if there isn't an impact one must question what it's all for.
Simon Jack made the point in a Tweet that you would need 200 (not 2000, he made a mistake and corrected it later) Australian trade deals to replace lost EU trade over the same period:
Worth saying that Oz trade deal is estimated to add 0.02% of UK GDP in 15 years time while govts own estimates of leaving EU single market will reduce UK GDP by 4% over same time period. you’d need 2000 Australias to offset impact. These are govts own figures not mine.
— Simon Jack (@BBCSimonJack) June 15, 2021
But consider this, on the same day, the BBC's NI Economics editor John Campbell tweeted that UK exports to Ireland in the first four months of this year have fallen by nearly 40%:
Value of Irish goods imports from GB January to April 2021 was €3.3bn million, a decrease of €2bn (-39%) compared with January to April 2020.
— JPCampbellBiz - Open a window, keep your distance (@JP_Biz) June 15, 2021
If this continues for the rest of the year the reduction in exports to Ireland will be worth about twice the total of our annual exports to Australia. Sobering isn't it?
Campbell contrasts Irish goods exports to GB over the same period and found they increased by 5% (€3.8bn - 4bn) and exports to NI went up by 40% (697m - 977m).
Irish goods imports from NI in the same period were up even more, by 60% from €656m to just over €1bn. He acknowledges this is only four months but says "it looks as if the UK’s traditionally chunky goods trade surplus with Ireland (£8bn in 2019) could be coming to an end."
And this will be repeated in many of our closest trading relationships which will increase our trade deficit in future years. Brexit might have made sense if the UK was already a global trade giant with a healthy surplus like Germany. But it is the equivalent of throwing our struggling exporters in at the deep end before they have learned to swim in the hope they can quickly discover how to do it before sinking beneath the water.
You might also be warned about the pending problem of a serious shortage of HGV drivers as reported by The Loadstar, a website for UK supply chain professionals. It reports:
Yet again Pineapple bought at local #tesco yesterday well beyond edible. pic.twitter.com/RJI1ymBnXh
— Gisela Stuart (@GiselaStuart) June 13, 2021