• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Exclusive: Britain no longer in top 10 for trade with Germany as Brexit bites

September 8, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 8, 2021

By Michael Nienaber and Rene Wagner

BERLIN (Reuters) – Britain is on course to lose its status as one of Germany’s top ten trading partners this year for the first time since 1950, as Brexit-related trade barriers drive firms in Europe’s largest economy to look for business elsewhere.

The UK left the European Union’s single market at the end of 2020, following more than four years of wrangling over the terms of its divorce during which corporate Germany had already begun to rein in ties with Britain.

In the first six months of this year, German imports from Britain sank nearly 11% year-on-year to 16.1 billion euros ($19.0 billion), Federal Statistics Office data reviewed by Reuters showed.

While German exports to Britain rose 2.6% to 32.1 billion euros, that could not prevent a decline in bilateral trade, by 2.3% to 48.2 billion euros – pushing Britain down to 11th spot from ninth, and from fifth before it voted to leave the EU in 2016.

A December 2020 survey of Germany’s BGA trade association showed one in five companies were reorganizing supply chains to swap out British suppliers for others in the EU.

That trend was becoming more marked, though British businesses were even worse off, said Michael Schmidt, President of the British Chamber of Commerce in Germany, making any turnaround before the end of this year unlikely.

“More and more small and medium-sized companies are ceasing to trade (in Britain) because of these (Brexit-related) hurdles,” Schmidt told Reuters.

The sharp first-half decline was also driven by pull-forward effects before the new hurdles, such as customs controls, kicked in in January.

“Many companies anticipated the problems… so they decided to pull forward imports by increasing stocks,” he said.

“LIKE SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FOOT”

While this effect pushed up bilateral trade in the fourth quarter, it cut demand early this year, while problems with the new customs checks also complicated trade from January onwards.

A data breakdown showed German imports of British agricultural products tumbled by more than 80% in the first six months while imports of pharmaceutical products nearly halved.

“Many small companies simply can’t afford the extra burden of keeping up to date and complying with all the kicked-in customs rules such as health certificates for cheese and other fresh products,” Schmidt said.

But the new trade realities had harmed British companies even more than German ones, which were more used to dealing with different customs regimes around the world as many had been exporting to various non-European countries for decades.

“In Britain, the picture is different,” Schmidt said, adding that many small firms there had exported mainly to the EU so had to start from scratch when confronted with new customs controls.

“For many small British firms, Brexit meant losing access to their most important export market… It’s like shooting yourself in the foot. And this explains why German imports from Britain are in free-fall now.”

He voiced hope that some of the decline might be temporary. “Companies are normally always in a good position to adapt quickly – but this needs time.”

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber, editing by John Stonestreet)

Source Link Exclusive: Britain no longer in top 10 for trade with Germany as Brexit bites

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. France fines U.S. bank JP Morgan $29.6 million in tax fraud settlement
  2. Facemasks and sanitizer as French kids go back to school
  3. Spain’s Fallas fiesta resumes after COVID hiatus, rain damage
  4. Virgin Galactic to launch first commercial research mission

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • Simplest Explanation For “Anomalous” Signals Coming From Underneath Antarctica Ruled Out
  • “Lizard Shampoo” And Pagan Texts Suggest “Dark Age” Medicine Wasn’t So Dark After All
  • Japanese Macaques May Mourn Their Dead – As Long As They’re Not Maggot-Infested
  • This Is What You’d Hear If You Listened To Voyager’s Golden Record NASA Sent To Interstellar Space
  • RFK Jr’s New Vaccine Advisors Just Recommended Fall Flu Vaccines – But There’s A Catch
  • Controversial World-First Project To Create Human DNA From Scratch Takes First Steps
  • Humans Weren’t The First Species To Travel Around The Moon. They Lost This Race To An Unexpected Animal
  • When You Hack A Shark, You’re Exploiting A Glitch Billions Of Years In The Making
  • Wellness Whales, A New Blood Type, And A DJ Set From Space
  • Hate Flying Ants? We Used To Have Ones The Size Of Hummingbirds
  • ‘Tis The Season To See Titan Cast A Shadow On Saturn – Especially If You Are In America
  • World’s Bravest Vets Put Full Metal Dental Crown On A Bear For The First Time
  • “Spider Rain”: The Bizarre Phenomenon That’ll Send Arachnophobes Into A Spin
  • Scientists Gave Mice A Human “Language Gene” And Something Curious Unfolded
  • Surveillance Of People Is More “Pervasive And Normalised” Than Previously Thought, Endangering Our Privacy
  • US Sees 90 Percent Drop In Heart Attack Deaths Over Last 50 Years
  • Is A Cat Poop Parasite Decapitating Human Sperm Contributing To Rising Infertility?
  • How Fast Were Dinosaurs? Guineafowl Races Reveal They Were Probably Slower Than We Thought
  • New Claim For World’s Oldest Rocks Dates Back A Whopping 4.16 Billion Years
  • Pre-Inca Temple Was A “Ritual Gateway” To Lost Civilization Of Tiwanaku
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version