UK Trade With European Union Has Fallen Off a Cliff This Year - Report

Britain left the European Union on 1 January 2020 and two months later the UK went into lockdown after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The rest of 2020 was a washout and the UK has been in lockdown again for most of 2021.

The Office for National Statistics has reported a big fall in trade with the EU in the first quarter of 2021.

The Daily Mail reported that imports from and exports to the EU had fallen by 23.1 percent, compared with the first quarter of 2018.

The ONS: trade in goods with the EU down 23% in the first quarter of 2021, compared to the first quarter of 2018.

That accords with my estimate - Brexit has reduce total UK trade by 11% (both with EU and the rest of the world). https://t.co/CYPrlKdVPm pic.twitter.com/h0cSfAdTTs

— John Springford (@JohnSpringford) May 25, 2021

​But trade with the rest of the world has held up much better - down just 0.8 percent in the same period.

The post-Brexit transition period ran out at the end of December 2020 so the first three months of the year was hit by all sorts of customs clearance problems for importers and exporters at Dover and Calais and other major entry and exit points.

UK/EU trade fell by 20.3 per cent between the last quarter of 2020 and January-March 2021.

The Irish border issue has also badly affected trade between the UK and the Republic of Ireland, with the value of exports down by £1billion between December 2020 and January 2021.