Brexit

[soulman101]

Our Trade deficit with EU is £80 billion.
Surely it's in their favour to do a trade deal
Think out of the 27 it's only France who are blocking it.

[WBA123]

Our Trade deficit with EU is £80 billion.
Surely it's in their favour to do a trade deal
Think out of the 27 it's only France who are blocking it.

You're not taking into account other factors. Its not all about the trade deficit.

These figures are not 100% accurate, but they are there or thereabouts...
We export £240b, from a market of 65m people. The EU market was around 55% of our exports.
The EU export to us £310bn ish, from a market of 500m people. The UK export market is worth around 7% of their exports.

Now tell me who trade is more important to? We are an important market to the EU, no doubt. But they are a fundamental market of ours and the largest trading bloc in the world.

A great example of how being part of a large bloc benefits us is the Moderna Pfizer vaccine that has just been approved, the UK bought 40m doses at $28. The EU consolidated their purchase and bought hundreds of millions of doses at $18. They have by far the greater buying power. We opted out of the EU vaccine scheme which included joint procurement. That cost us $400m.