CARIFORUM and UK EPA Study

4.6 UK Trade Trends

UK imports from the world declined significantly over their 2017 levels and remained on the downward trend. This is consistent with IMF forecasts of the UK’s import performance over its 2019 levels. Notably the IMF 18 projects an increase in UK imports in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The ONS indicates that the fall off in imports can be largely attributed to the impact of trade with the UK’s main trading partner, Germany, which was attributed to the fallout from BREXIT and the resulting trade frictions. In the post-January 2021 period the ONS noted that the following factors accounted for the decline in imports:

• Disruption in the lead up to the UK-EU transition period • Stockpiling in the lead up to the UK-EU transition period • The impact of the pandemic and the national lockdown that reduced demand • Global supply chain issues

Interestingly, the ONS 19 indicates that trade with non-EU countries suffered less of a decline than trade with the EU, indicating that non-EU countries could potentially benefit from these frictions with the EU, at least in the short-term. As shown in the figure below, the overall decline in UK world imports is consistent with the overall declining trend in CF exports to the UK, though for some individual CF partners, exports increased in value terms.

18 IMF, World Economic Outlook. 19 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/bulletins/uktrade/january2021

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