"Talks of trade deficits with the EU taken in isolation are yet another example of statistical manipulation."
The thread had kind of drifted away from EU/UK to a more general thesis
that the wealth of the nation increases by the value of the goods received and counters to that idea. A trade deficit is only meaningful when considering total imports/exports. No One is going to argue with that! The only point of raising deficits in terms of UK/EU trade is to indicate that in monetary terms the EU risks more than the UK should negotiations fail, £302 billion/£242 billion in the last recorded year.