Hunt, who voted Remain in 2016, said the report by Policy Exchange, a right-wing think tank, showed “Brexit has had much less impact on British exports to the EU than has been previously thought”.
The report’s key findings include suggestions that the UK was already underperforming rival developed nations in growing its exports to the EU.
“Re-exports” – goods imported to the UK and immediately exported again, also accounted for declining performance in trade, the report claims, while arguing that Government should continue rejecting the suggestion that it must prioritise EU trade over closer economic links with the United States.
The new report has been released as Sir Keir Starmer looks to reset ties with the EU, partly to boost trade and economic growth.
“Policy Exchange’s work in this area should be carefully scrutinised by the OBR when they next update their models.”
“So for example – the move to luxury vehicle production, we were already strong in this sector but have lost ground in EU exports of volume cars. That’s obviously a Brexit effect but is ignored in the telling.”
Report is not ‘junk’
Jonathan Portes, a senior former Civil Service economist, said that the report was not “junk” and was a “sensible and constructive piece of work” but would not shake the accepted view that Brexit has damaged UK trade.
“It doesn’t negate the fact that UK goods exports have performed very badly since Brexit, and considerably worse in the years running up to Brexit, and there is a wide variety of analysis that concludes that Brexit is at least partly responsible for that, if not wholly responsible for that, and I think that remains the consensus view.
“I don’t think this will change the consensus view that Brexit is still a significant part of the reason we’ve had such terrible export performance, but equally it does correctly point out there’s a bunch of other things going on and Brexit’s not the whole story by a very long way.”
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