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| Laim Fox - the first time it was a typo; now it's policy |
In February he said: "I often repeat the fact that the IMF estimates that, in the next 10 to 15 years, 90% of global economic growth will originate from outside the European Union".
Fox is not the only one to make some version of this claim or, as you can see, more than one version himself. What are the actual figures, and what do they mean?
A Twitter contact points me to a Q&A session in the EU Parliament.
See Parliamentary questions in European Parliament— Michael Loftus (@newsfrom2) 1 December 2018
18 March 2016
E-014997/2015(ASW)
Answer given by Mr Moscovici on behalf of the Commission
Question reference: E-014997/2015
The record tells us: "The importance of EU market access to third countries is indicated, among others, by the fact that 90% of future growth will come outside the European Union. This figure was calculated based on GDP data from the IMF World Economic Outlook database (April 2015). These calculations were updated to reflect the latest available IMF data (October 2015). As it can be seen in the table attached, the world GDP is expected to reach USD119 trillion in 2016 and USD149 trillion in 2020. The respective forecasts for the EU GDP are USD20 trillion and USD23 trillion. This means that in 2016 11% of the world GDP growth will come from the EU and 89% from non-EU countries, whereas in 2020 90% of the world GDP growth will come from outside the EU."
The table referred to can be seen in the annex to that question. World GDP and EU GDP are both projected to grow from 2016 to 2020, with the EU growing slightly more slowly, so the EU's share of world growth falls from 11% to 10%. 90% of global economic growth in 2020 will therefore originate from outside the European Union, to borrow some of Fox's words. This is not exactly "global growth in the next 5 years" or indeed "the next 10 to 15 years" as seen from 2018. Has Fox just half-understood a striking figure and misused it, or does he have some other source? Would it not just be simpler to say "about 90% of global growth at the moment comes from the world outside the EU"?
What, if anything, do we take from this? If in the future poorer countries grow faster than rich countries that's neither unexpected nor undesirable, but we don't see anything like that in these aggregate figures. Instead there's a slight shift in activity from the 7% of the world population of which the UK is currently a part to the other 93%. British companies currently buy from and sell to companies and people in the EU and the rest of the world and, at the aggregate level, Brexit doesn't change that. The odd new trade deal might make some of that trade easier and more profitable. The loss - more or less temporary - of agreements we currently have but lose at Brexit will make it harder and less profitable.
A tweet from Fox's verified account comes to mind. I still have no idea what he's trying to prove with this presentation. It shows, for example, that the UK trades successfully outside the EU and that the share of exports to the EU has risen slightly in recent months.
The UK exports more to the rest of the world than the EU, @ONS figures released today confirm. Total exports outside the EU were £342.8bn in the year to June 2018 #FreeTradeUK pic.twitter.com/4749jX1Kjd— Dr Liam Fox MP (@LiamFox) September 28, 2018
Mr Betty put it simply: "We have three priorities. Number one priority is to hang on to what we've got, number two priority is, sell more to our existing client base, and number three is to find new markets. But it has to be in that ratio and it has to be at that level, because right now there is a lot of pressure on all British suppliers selling to Europe and we need to maintain our European clients because they are vitally important to our overall volume and our overall business".
This message was reinforced a couple of minutes later by David Henig, who spent nine years as a senior official in Fox's Department of International Trade and its predecessors. "It's going to be years before we know what we can do, tradewise," he said. "All our partners are going to be saying to us, 'what's your relationship with the EU'? We don't know. This deal... is the blind Brexit that people warned us about."
The yellow brick road to new trade agreements with China, the USA and the rest might make Laim Fox's eyes light up, but it's also his job at the moment to prepare all the agreements we currently benefit from for renegotiation after the Brexit transition period during which our trading partners will be asked to pretend that we are still an EU member state. The occasional progress report on this might be reassuring.
Those carefully honed words from yesterday's speech "there is a world beyond Europe, and a time Beyond Brexit" are vacuous and self-evident. There's actual work to do.
This message was reinforced a couple of minutes later by David Henig, who spent nine years as a senior official in Fox's Department of International Trade and its predecessors. "It's going to be years before we know what we can do, tradewise," he said. "All our partners are going to be saying to us, 'what's your relationship with the EU'? We don't know. This deal... is the blind Brexit that people warned us about."
Those carefully honed words from yesterday's speech "there is a world beyond Europe, and a time Beyond Brexit" are vacuous and self-evident. There's actual work to do.
