Brexit cut trade between UK and EU by close to 20%, ESRI says

Brexit resulted in a “substantial negative impact” for trade in both directions between the European Union and the UK, according to Ireland’s Economic and Social Research Institute.

Trade from UK to the EU dropped 16% while there was a 20% decline in trade from the EU to the UK, compared to a no-Brexit scenario, the ESRI said in a working paper published Wednesday. The analysis looked at product-level data on goods trade flows for 2021 -- the first full year of the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc.

“Across EU member states, we find that Brexit has led to a significant decline in trade with the UK in almost all cases although by varying magnitudes,” authors Janez Kren and Martina Lawless wrote.

For most countries the drop in imports and exports was similar, though Ireland stands out has having had a particularly large decline in imports from the UK, they said.

Meanwhile, there has been “no notable impact to date” on exports from Ireland to the UK. This may be partly attributable to increased trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland, they added.

The research used a premise for comparison that trade with the UK should have been expected to grow at a similar pace to trade with other EU partner countries around the world.

Although EU-UK trade recovered in value terms after a fall in early 2021, it is “well below” what would have been expected if it had performed on a comparable level with other trade partners, the report said.