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| You're missing the point, if the others are operating under the same market conditions and generate positive trade balances, what's wrong with UK industry that it is not able to achieve the same outcome???
By the same token, Ireland and the UK joined the the EEC on the same date and at the time they were in monetary union, yet today Ireland has been generating positive trade balances since the late 1980s while the UK generates deficits. In 1974 the UK accounted for 55% of Irish exports and yet by 2003 it had fallen to 18%, with the rest of the EU moving from 21% to 43% of exports, while exports to the US moved up from 10% of the total to 21%.
To me the idea that the EU is somehow holding back UK trade does not ring true. If it was the case then how come the others are not also being impacted by EU policies??? It would appear to me that domestic policies must some how play a major part in the outcome. | |
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You're using Ireland vs UK as an argument based on a crude GDP measure?!?!
Ireland is/was a developing country, so greater GDP growth isn't unexpected. This isn't factoring many over huge factors (decline in North Sea oil etc.).
Of course Ireland has done better out of the EU - it has been a net recipient of EU funding paid for partly by the UK which is one of the largest net contributors.
Ireland has played its hand well setting up as a tax haven and riding the boom of big multinational tax avoiders.
I don't doubt that the EU is great for smaller countries which can be subsidised by the more developed economies. The quid pro quo for the bigger economies is that force them to open up their markets and have a form of commercial colonisation. Of course, if the services markets are not opened up, then this quid pro quo is worth less to a services focussed exporter.
IMO, the UK has been actively harmed during its membership of the EU as its ability to manage its trade policy has been hobbled by the EU.
The UK knows a thing or two about colonisation and I think they would have been able to get a much better deal unshackled from the EU.
Still, props to Germany. They played the game well and have emerged the preeminent EU superpower.