Lessons learned for a Global Britain - UK trade in manufacturing, 2000-2019

In 2019, the 2.9–3 million people who worked in manufacturing throughout the UK delivered 86.9 per cent of the UK’s physical goods exports – despite comprising just 9.1 per cent of the workforce.1 Add in all services, and manufacturing still delivered 45.5 per cent of the UK’s total exports in 2019.2 In terms of tariffs and market regulation, manufacturing is also the sector that is most impacted. [...] It analyses the performance of each of the UK’s top 10 manufacturing industries during the final two decades of the UK’s membership of the EU. [...] L ast, that seamless, tariff-free trade with the EU failed to deliver the benefits of liberal free trade to the UK during the past 20 years – and is unlikely to do so in the future. [...] Other hand block represents the entirety of the exports that the UK conducted within the Customs Union, and almost all that the UK conducted within the Single Market. [...] And so, the first paradox of the UK’s EU trade: despite the great theoretical advantages of seamless EU trade, the exports it principally impacted were indisputably the UK’s worst-performing in the two decades to 2020.