Less worse not better
Hurrah, put out more flags, the UK has joined the Pacific free trade area called CPTPP. Apparently it is worth £12 trillion to the UK economy.
Or not.
The laughable £12 trillion is the total worth of the economies involved, 9 or which we already have trade deals with. So it is two new trade deals with Malaysia and Brunei and slightly better ones with the rest.
The government’s own figures put the worth at 0.08% of GDP over 10 years, or to put it another way, 50 or so more trade deals like this and we will be no worse off than if we had stayed in theEU. But it gets worse
The 4% hit to the UK economy caused by Brexit was calculated by the OBR and is worked out by adding up all the benefits of leaving, including new trade deals and deducting all the costs, like leaving the Single Market and becoming an international laughing stock.
So the new trade deal is already in the 4% figure, if we had not signed it we would be 4.08% poorer; now we are back to just 4% as calculated, or probably far more as those figures are being revised all the time by experts.
To those who say this deal will be worth far more you have to ask, where are the more up to date UK official government calculations showing that? If they existed they would be on the front page of every paper, rather than that fantasy figure from yesterday.
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Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media