Agreed SBD. There's no doubt Brexit had an impact on Januarys figures (although GDP was actually better than forecast) in a couple of ways. firstly many companies increased imports/exports of non perishable products in Autumn/winter 2020, not knowing if a trade deal was going to happen or not. secondly, it was always going to messy in Jan as firms got used to new paperwork, as we know this caused a load of delays at port, these delays we’re further exacerbated by Covid testing requirements
...again leading to firms reducing imports/exports as they didn’t want to get caught up in it unless wholly necessary
I was on video conference last month and even by mid Feb many of the issues had been resolved and delays significantly reduced. Obviously the additional paperwork remains but companies are getting used to the new requirements. The logistics company on the call (Europa Worldwide) had indicated that already they were back to their expected number of cross border shipments and the time waiting at port had reduced significantly.
Will be interesting to see Feb and March figures and then when the world hopefully returns to some normality post Covid. I’d be shocked if those percentage reductions didn’t dramatically improve. But for people to make an assessment on post Brexit trade (Ben Bradshaw ‘Disastrous’) based on one months figures, in the middle of a pandemic, feels a little premature
ps not much mention of the negotiated suspension of additional US tariffs on Scottish whisky (which had cost the industry half a billion in sales in the last year or so) I see ?!. Had to at least put a tiny bit of balance back on the thread