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Just had to make one minor factual correction.
"The UK is the EUs biggest export market bar one, the US."
Looking at the trade figures to allow people to make their own mind up on who needs the other more.....
The UK accounts for around 8% of the exports of EU countries.
The value of these exports is £341bn - or put another way around 2.8% of the EUs GDP.
The EU accounts for around 44% of the UKs exports.
The value of these exports is £274bn - or put another way around 12.7% of the UKs GDP.
The UK has a trade deficit with the EU of around £67bn.
That is equivalent to around 0.5% of the EU's GDP.
Given the above, if there is disruption to trade between the UK and the EU then this will proportionately impact the UK far more than the EU.
These figures primarily reflect how small the UK economy is compared to the rest of the EU. The UK Gross Domestic Product is around $2.8 trillion ($2,800 billion) while that of the EU, excluding the UK, is around $16tn. (Not far off 6 times larger that of the UK.) Another way of putting this is that the UK accounts for around 15% of the GDP of the current EU, including the UK.
I have also seen some people mention that the German car market is heavily dependent upon exports to the UK. Having a look at figures for BMW, the UK accounts for 9.6% of the cars that BMW sells - behind China (25.7%), the US (14.2%) and of course Germany (12.5%). |
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