Vocal Voices

The people in the EU who bought into their "we are the greatest" mantra have been having a meltdown on X. VDL is useless they say. She didn't have the cards I say.

Then I poke fun at them. She led with Zero for Zero but they told Boris Zero for Zero is impossible. To Trump that means "capitulation". Trump, being Trump, went straight for the jugular.

I've been having a merry few hours pointing out that the UK has a better deal and it could get better.

I did hold out a faint hope for them though. The VDL deal could be crushed in ratification. Because it includes both investments and energy purchases from the US it falls outside the core competency of the EU And has to be ratified by every state in the EU and, in some cases like Belgium, by their devolved parliaments. Which was the major blocker for CETA.

What I didn't mention was that in this event, Trump will simply re-implement 50% tariffs....

I did enjoy telling the Danish Gentleman that our "just a small country" was able to negotiate a better deal with the US whereas their ultra powerful and much vaunted EU caved and were wholly abused.

Then I put the cherry on the top. If the EU had come with a GDP of $24tn and not $20tn, plus a better deficit picture with the UK included, then they would have had a much stronger hand. But they decided that reform of their structures to keep the UK in the EU was totally unacceptable.

It has been an interesting Cosmic Karma day or two....

The US / EU balance of trade has tended to be in the EU's favour. Trump is trying to alter that.
He's letting them know who the big dog is.

If you sell $250bn more to America than America sells to you, who is in the driving seat for trade?

It is something I said all along about UK trade with the EU but nobody believed me. The EU is far more fragile than people suspect and they are susceptible to being manipulated. Whilst they will absolutely cut their nose off to spite their face, there are limits to everything. The time for Starmer to forge a new deal with the EU would have been now. Not when he capitulated to them earlier.

The Trump wrecking ball continues to tear down all the preconceptions and nicely packaged economic excuses for pitiful growth performance.

It is fun to watch.

How about a less myopic and more balanced view? Here's one. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxyre8jvk7o

And by the way. If Trump's wrecking ball does shrink the EU that hurts the UK as well given that we do 41% of our business with them, We will have to find new markets to make up the shortfall... Paraguay, Botswana, Cabo Verde, Solomon Islands, you know, those sorts of massive trading states. We can do that now that we are out of the EU.

Oh wait, we always could. Germany has just done a bilateral deal with a non-EU country. Which one? Why, the UK of course.

We were lied to in order to "get Brexit done".

Germany does not have a bilateral trade deal with the UK. They do not have the competence. What the German finance minister did was call for the UK to "intensify trade relations with the EU to reduce Brexit-related trade barriers".

Non tariff barriers are the biggest issue with the EU and there are 27 sets of them on top of the EU non tariff barriers. We gave up fishing rights for 12 years to get live animal and processed meat sales to the UK back again, get access to, but no guarantee of, €150bn in defence funds the EU is spending to rebuild defence and a few other non essential things like pet passports.

The UK's export trading with the EEC and EU has been declining for decades and will not increase with joining again. We exported around 65% of our goods and services to the EEC in the late 1970's, this had fallen to 47% by 2010. It never really went over 49% again except for one small hop and the Brexit vote in 2016 ensured it would continue to fall from the 48% at that time.

Our trade with the EU is slated to drop below 40% in coming years. Our economy is 82% services, not goods and the EU is determined to take as much of the banking as they can. Most amusingly banking rose from 8.3% of GDP in 2021 to 8.8% of GDP in 2024.

All that a reduction in the EU market will do to the UK is accelerate a trend already set by multiple decades even in the EEC and EU. Our exports growth are stronger and more vibrant out of the EU. Out of the EU we are able to choose the goods we import as EU rules do not apply. Under reform that will be solidly revisited and our import costs will fall. With the widening of our import business around the world, we will also expand our export markets as they will be exposed to the UK as a good trading partner.

The CPTPP is the third largest trading bloc in the world and by far the fastest growing. We are part of that bloc and we should be leveraging it to the full. Not cowtowing to Brussels and giving up our fishing grounds to agree agriproduct standard equivalency which never changed from when we were in the EU.

We do not need to bolt the UK economy to the deck of the titanic. We need to open the door to Starship and take it to Mars.

As for that BBC article. I was highly critical of it. Grok told me I was too critical but had a point.

Final Answer

Article Balance: The BBC article is moderately balanced, providing data and expert input but focusing more on risks (e.g., EU slowdown affecting UK exports) than opportunities. It is not highly edited to instill fear, but its selective emphasis on negative outcomes and omission of UK opportunities and Brexit-related trade challenges creates a somewhat pessimistic tone.
Ignored Opportunities and UK-EU

Trade: The article largely overlooks opportunities for the UK to fill US market gaps left by EU exporters facing higher tariffs (e.g., in cars or pharmaceuticals). It also ignores the significant slowdown in UK-EU trade since Brexit (27% export drop, 32% import drop from 2021-2023), which is a more immediate challenge than EU-US trade issues.

I call that summary highly edited to present a negative picture. Grok likes numbers so says it is "moderately balanced".