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| Something else worth keeping in mind:
One serious question we should be address is why the UK (+ France and Spain) continues to generate a negative balance of trade while the EU, the Euro group, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland etc... are all generating positive balances of trade. All countries face the same market conditions and EU regulations which would suggest that domestic affairs play a much bigger part in the story than the EU does, with possibly one exception: Euro group countries enjoy the advantage of being able to trade in an under valued currency without cost to their exchequers. | |
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Well, it is zero-sum, so if there's a positive somewhere, there will be a negative elsewhere.
Germany has benefited from entering the Eurozone at an under-valued exchange rate.
The UK has opened up the market for goods to the EU, but the EU has not fully opened up the services market (which the UK relies on) - in fact, Germany has gone on record recently as saying that they will NEVER fully open up the EU services market. So there are still internal protectionist policies which work against the UK.