dphole retweeted
For the many UK politicians @UKLabour and journalists @BBC who don't know anything about UK trade, here are the highlights:
1. The UK is now predominantly a service exporter. 57% of UK exports are services, which are not affected by EU 'red tape'.
2. UK goods exports have dropped from almost 70% of our total exports in 1997 to just 43% in 2025. This trend began long before Brexit and is tied to Net Zero mandates, high UK energy prices, and EV mandates.
3. Machinery and transport goods, such as cars and aircraft parts, are 42% of all UK goods exports. This is by far the UK's largest export sector, although it is also falling. It was 50% of UK exports in 2000. But if the UK joins the EU's CBAM, companies in this sector will see their imported material costs rise, making their exports even less competitive.
4. Chemicals are the UK's second-largest export sector. They account for 19% of UK goods exports, but this share is shrinking due to UK and EU energy costs and Net Zero regulations. These will increase if the UK joins the EU ETS.
5. Miscellaneous Manufactures account for 11% of UK goods exports. This is still the UK's third-largest export sector, even though it includes many goods the UK no longer makes because of our high Carbon taxes, which will increase if the UK signs up to the EU's even higher ETS on November 20th.
6. Fuels account for 9% of UK exports. This is still the UK's 4th largest goods export sector, even though the current and previous governments are/were trying to destroy it with bans on new exploration and ultra-high taxes.
7. Material Manufactures account for 8% of UK goods exports. This sector includes iron, steel, aluminium, ceramics, and glass manufacturing - industries that have gone, or are going, out of business in the UK because of high UK energy costs, which will rise if the UK joins the EU ETS.
8. These five sectors make up almost 90% of UK exports. The other 5 industry sectors are insignificant. But the government and our journalists think the UK is New Zealand and that the only goods we export are food and live animals to the EU. We don't! UK food and live animal exports to the EU were just 1.3% of the UK's total exports.
9. The government is about to sacrifice all of the export industries listed above to slightly reduce the IMPORT costs of a handful of Supermarkets, at least two of which are privately owned German companies.
These savings will not be passed on to UK shoppers because the government has also increased wages again, and supermarket energy costs will increase if we join the EU's ETS.
10. UK exports of food and live animals will not increase because we are paying farmers to not produce them, this has nothing to do with EU red tape. Instead we are paying farmers to plant trees and wildflowers or plaster their farmland with solar panels. (54% of UK electricity is coming from gas today, 12% from solar and 3% from wind.)
11. Write to your MP and tell him to #StoptheReset.
If you don't stop this, don't complain when all of our goods export industries have closed because of EU higher carbon taxes, EU higher carbon import tariffs, and the cost of complying with the EU's new packaging and process regulations.
Lest we forget. – at Manhattan, NY
This #RemembranceSunday, we remember all those who fought for the liberation of our Islands, and those who died in the World Wars waged against tyranny.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them.
Agritech, alongside AI and life sciences, are areas where the UK has real competitive advantage; now to be sacrificed for alignment with the competitively moribund EU. British gene-edited crops subject to EU laws under Burnham deal telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2…
dphole retweeted
Read this thread. If it’s true it means the @UKLabour government is consciously destroying our burgeoning AI and high tech sector out of a slavish desire to be run by the EU and increase the sale of seed potatoes.
This is a must-read. A forensic examination of the so-called reset. There is almost nothing of value for the UK; instead a complete capitulation of national interest to an ill defined promise of benefits in the future. A “jam tomorrow” treaty. – at Manhattan, NY
The EU Reset is bad for British taxpayers, British youths, and British businesses. This report by economist Catherine McBride OBE, published by the Great British Business Council, sets out what the UK gives up under the EU Reset and what it will cost.
EU Reset: What the Brexit Reset Deal Will Cost Britain
gbbc.uk/eu-reset-cost-britai…
dphole retweeted
Sir John Cowperthwaite ran Hong Kong's finances from 1961 to 1971 and treated regulation like a tax on discovery. Nobody in government can know which business will work, so he refused to pick, plan, or protect.
Whitehall sent officials to Hong Kong to push for economic statistics, and he sent them home. When Milton Friedman asked in 1963 why he collected so little data, Cowperthwaite answered: "If I let them compute those statistics, they'll want to use them for planning." Numbers give planners a reason to act, and every plan arrives as a rule that tells entrepreneurs what they may not try. Asked what poor countries should do to grow, he said they should abolish the office of national statistics.
He rebuffed tariffs, opposed corporate subsidies, and refused London's push to raise taxes. When a legislator proposed that the government back promising industries, he asked how the government could possibly know which ones those were.
The results arrived without a plan. During his decade as Financial Secretary, real wages rose 50% and the share of residents in acute poverty fell from 50% to 15%. When he took the job, the average Hong Kong resident earned about a quarter of what a Briton earned. By the early 1990s, Hong Kongers out-earned Britons. Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, planned its economy with ministries full of statisticians and fell behind a rock with no resources except a harbor.
Every regulation assumes a regulator who knows which experiments to allow. That regulator does not exist, so each gate he builds blocks the ideas nobody in the room could have predicted. Hong Kong's most valuable policy was the absence of a gatekeeper.
As far as civil servants go, this guy is the GOAT.
dphole retweeted
If this is true, then the UK would lose an industry worth £28 billion, to slightly lower the import costs of UK supermarkets, including the privately owned German ones that operate in the UK.
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The UK's entire food and animal exports to the EU were only worth £12 billion in 2025. Why are we throwing good money after bad?
🙄
The performance of the UK's railways deteriorates after being taken under government control. Surprise, surprise.
thetimes.com/uk/transport/ar… – at Manhattan, NY
dphole retweeted
The UK is supposed to have lost 6-8% of GDP by leaving the EU, but given the UK runs an £88B deficit with the EU, where is that growth supposed to have come from? By us buying even more from them?
Meanwhile, the UK enjoys a £70B trade surplus with non-EU countries, which we're willing to threaten by rejoining the EU. Surely this is where we should be concentrating our efforts.
dphole retweeted
Handy chart to illustrate the relative importance of UK exports of food to the EU, which is the centre-piece of the 'reset'... 🤔👇
(In 2025, the UK's exports of food to the EU were worth £12.2bn, about 1.3% of all exports and just 0.4% of GDP)
A dreadful deal for the UK. – at Zurich, Switzerland
The PM is relying on a 0.4 per cent GDP growth projection for the reset. FOr SPS, the number does not include the loss of opportunity for the UK which cannot now improve its SPS regime in procompetitive ways. It does not include the increased burden for non-EU imports which will face the EU’s hazard based import control regime. It does not include…
Exactly this. – at Zurich, Switzerland
dphole retweeted
Great deconstruction of the myths around the economics of leaving the EU from @bernardjenkin. 👇
politics.co.uk/2026/11/burnh…
One of Our Own #COYS – at Zurich, Switzerland
