Thursday 2 October 2014

Another EU phile factoid half truth

The EU philes always claim to the gullible British public that the EU is the biggest market in the world. That is debatable. The US is pretty well the same size. In nominal terms the EU is slightly larger in PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) the US  is slightly ahead.


2013 GDP figures in million $
Trade Nom. GDP PPP GDP Nom. GDP PPP GDP HDI Population
per capita per capita
 Brazil 494,800 2,245,673 2,423,306 11,208 12,221 0.744 201,032,714
 China 3,801,000 9,240,270 13,395,396 6,807 9,844 0.719 1,339,724,852
EU 4,567,000 17,350,853 16,260,640 34,072 32,152 0.876 501,259,840
 India 809,400 1,876,797 5,069,158 1,499 4,077 0.586 1,210,193,422
UK 1,127,000 2,522,261 2,390,873 39,351 37,307 0.892 62,041,708
USA 3,969,000 16,799,700 16,799,700 53,143 53,101 0.914 316,173,000

Note these are 2013 figures and the figures are for the whole of the EU.  More importat is the GDP per capita which measures how wealthy people are is much higher in the US than the EU 53143 cf 34072 nominal.

NB these figures are for the EU as a whole including the buoyant UK. The Eurozone figures are much worse.

Figures for 2014 will increase the gap between the Eurozone US gap.The latest annual growth figures I can find are US 2.6%, Eurozone 0.3%  so the Eurozone is shrinking compared to the US.

If one looks at the BRICs the gap with the Eurozone is also rapidly widening. Last annual growth rates: China 7.5%, India  4.7%, Brazil 2.5%, Russia 1.3%.

From a British exporters point of view it is far easier to export to the growing BRIC markets than the stagnant Eurozone. More important the Eurozone makes the same things as the UK so UK profit margins  will be squeezed compared to BRIC markets where there is much less domestic competition. 

The main thing holding back the UK economy is lack of demand in the Eurozone. Its like a millstone round our neck. Its an increasingly unbalanced trade with the Eurozone exporting to the UK but buying less from the UK. Thats one thing the LibDems keep quite about. Time to shine the spotlight on it for all to see.

Vote Farage in Thanet

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