I am sure we all remember being told before and after the Brexit vote that the UK would be able to forged new trade deals across the globe and be at the forefront of world trade and basically we would live in a land of milk and honey.

Well it would seem that the first major trade deal we negotiated with Japan which we were promised would lead to an increase in trade of £15 billion has proved to be a failure and in fact has led to a decline in trade of some 5%.

As reported in the press today "Minako Morita-Jaeger, a senior research fellow in international trade at Sussex University business school and a policy research fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory, said the government had “oversold” the UK-Japan trade agreement and it did not offer significant economic advantages over the previous EU deal. She said the early trade data did not appear encouraging."

Quelle Surprise.