The ONS has released an analysis of why its trade figures don’t agree with Eurostat’s figures. Since both are measuring the same trade this might seem strange, the EU’s exports to the UK are the UK’s imports from the EU and vice versa.
But here methodology comes into play; as the ONS points out “trade is only counted when an economic change of ownership has occurred – if trade moves across land borders but remains under the same ownership then ONS do not count this as trade. For example, this may include a car company moving an engine between factories in different countries.” But Eurostat does count that as trade; a car engine might cross a border several times before making into the finished product and it counts them all.
This might be the major explanation as to why the ONS thinks UK exports to the EU are only down 15% and Eurostat thinks they are down double that.
This matters, as much of the benefit of the Single Market was that very ability to move components effortlessly and seamlessly around Europe, it massively increases productivity. Now the British government has put delays, extra costs and form filling onto that trade it is not so easy, or seamless and much less attractive. It is early days yet but this suggests what Eurostat is counting and the ONS is not, is that UK businesses are being sliced out of the supply chain of huge manufacturing industries. They are therefore probably being replaced with other firms, presumably ones still in the Single Market.
https://jonty.substack.com/