Are we all Trussed up...

[jois]

...
Effectively de valuing the Pound by stealth is not always a bad thing. It puts up the price of imports but makes exports less exspensive

Where do you see the opportunities for the UK to export... countries and sectors?

Thanks

Jonathan

The first oportunities are the counties and sectors we already operate in. Cheaper exports sell better generally.

I'm not in a position to come up with a ten year plan in the next 10 minutes

[Psamathe]

...
Effectively de valuing the Pound by stealth is not always a bad thing. It puts up the price of imports but makes exports less exspensive

Where do you see the opportunities for the UK to export... countries and sectors?

Thanks

Jonathan

The first oportunities are the counties and sectors we already operate in. Cheaper exports sell better generally.

To what extent do those exports require raw materials to be imported (an higher prices due to GB£ crash)? To what extent is the cost of those exports impacted by local costs like employee pay (which is likely impacted by inflation as employee have to pay higher food/fuel costs, higher mortgages, etc.)? Are there not factors beyond just exchange rate that impact the cost of exports?

Ian

[Jdsk]

The first oportunities are the counties and sectors we already operate in.

The first opportunities with those are to stop making trade harder.

We've just raised the trade barriers with our largest trading partner. Lowering those would help enormously.

And we've just been told as clearly as is possible that we shouldn't expect a new trade deal with the USA any time soon. We should stop playing very risky games with the Northern Ireland Protocol as a first step in unlocking this.

Without addressing both of those we should expect further deterioration in trade, not increases.

Jonathan

[jois]

Where do you see the opportunities for the UK to export... countries and sectors?

Thanks

Jonathan

The first oportunities are the counties and sectors we already operate in. Cheaper exports sell better generally.

To what extent do those exports require raw materials to be imported (an higher prices due to GB£ crash)? To what extent is the cost of those exports impacted by local costs like employee pay (which is likely impacted by inflation as employee have to pay higher food/fuel costs, higher mortgages, etc.)? Are there not factors beyond just exchange rate that impact the cost of exports?

Ian

Devaluing the pound has been done deliberately and overly out of financial necessarity. So it clearly has a net effect for good in some situations.

[Psamathe]

The first oportunities are the counties and sectors we already operate in. Cheaper exports sell better generally.

To what extent do those exports require raw materials to be imported (an higher prices due to GB£ crash)? To what extent is the cost of those exports impacted by local costs like employee pay (which is likely impacted by inflation as employee have to pay higher food/fuel costs, higher mortgages, etc.)? Are there not factors beyond just exchange rate that impact the cost of exports?

Ian

Devaluing the pound has been done deliberately and overly out of financial necessarity. So it clearly has a net effect for good in some situations.

In which case, why are the BoE now likely/expected to take action to get the GB£ to recover - action that will cost (e.g. raising interest rates).

Ian

[jois]

The first oportunities are the counties and sectors we already operate in.

The first opportunities with those are to stop making trade harder.

We've just raised the trade barriers with our largest trading partner. Lowering those would help enormously.

And we've just been told as clearly as is possible that we shouldn't expect a new trade deal with the USA any time soon. We should stop playing very risky games with the Northern Ireland Protocol as a first step in unlocking this.

Without addressing both of those we should expect further deterioration in trade. not increases.

Jonathan

Your taking this discussion off down how wise was leaving the EU. It's not somewhere I want to go as it tends to get irrational very quickly in my experience.

The issue facing the government is we have indeed left . What do they do, to combat a situation of which Brexit is only a component part not the whole problem

[Jdsk]

The first oportunities are the counties and sectors we already operate in.

The first opportunities with those are to stop making trade harder.

We've just raised the trade barriers with our largest trading partner. Lowering those would help enormously.

And we've just been told as clearly as is possible that we shouldn't expect a new trade deal with the USA any time soon. We should stop playing very risky games with the Northern Ireland Protocol as a first step in unlocking this.

Without addressing both of those we should expect further deterioration in trade. not increases.

Your taking this discussion off down how wise was leaving the EU. It's not somewhere I want to go as it tends to get irrational very quickly in my experience.

The issue facing the government is we have indeed left . What do they do, to combat a situation of which Brexit is only a component part not the whole problem

My emboldening. No, I'm not.

I'm saying what we should do now from the position that we're in now.

Jonathan

[jois]

To what extent do those exports require raw materials to be imported (an higher prices due to GB£ crash)? To what extent is the cost of those exports impacted by local costs like employee pay (which is likely impacted by inflation as employee have to pay higher food/fuel costs, higher mortgages, etc.)? Are there not factors beyond just exchange rate that impact the cost of exports?

Ian

Devaluing the pound has been done deliberately and overly out of financial necessarity. So it clearly has a net effect for good in some situations.

In which case, why are the BoE now likely/expected to take action to get the GB£ to recover - action that will cost (e.g. raising interest rates).

Ian

Maybe they didn't want to devalue it that much. Maybe the " independent " bank of England isn't on message, interest rates were due to rise anyway, they put it back for the period of mourning

[jois]

The first opportunities with those are to stop making trade harder.

We've just raised the trade barriers with our largest trading partner. Lowering those would help enormously.

And we've just been told as clearly as is possible that we shouldn't expect a new trade deal with the USA any time soon. We should stop playing very risky games with the Northern Ireland Protocol as a first step in unlocking this.

Without addressing both of those we should expect further deterioration in trade. not increases.

Your taking this discussion off down how wise was leaving the EU. It's not somewhere I want to go as it tends to get irrational very quickly in my experience.

The issue facing the government is we have indeed left . What do they do, to combat a situation of which Brexit is only a component part not the whole problem

My emboldening. No, I'm not.

I'm saying what we should do now from the position that we're in now.

Jonathan

Which appears to be undo a big chunk of Brexit, which amounts to the same discussion. It's politically impossible for the government to do that.as desired as it may be, it's not going to happen, so...

[Psamathe]

Devaluing the pound has been done deliberately and overly out of financial necessarity. So it clearly has a net effect for good in some situations.

In which case, why are the BoE now likely/expected to take action to get the GB£ to recover - action that will cost (e.g. raising interest rates).

Ian

Maybe they didn't want to devalue it that much. Maybe the " independent " bank of England isn't on message, interest rates were due to rise anyway, they put it back for the period of mourning

They've done that one recently. Markets are now expecting an emergency rate rise in addition to that (as I posted above).

Ian

[Cugel]

...
The process has been in train for a couple or more centuries now.
...

How would you describe the state of "truly representative government" in England (or anywhere else) before that?

Thanks

Jonathan

PS: The First Reform Act hadn't been passed in 1822 and my grandmother was not allowed to vote for the first part of her adult life.

I would describe most governments, of every ilk & tittle, as representative of the power struggles of various elites, aristocracies and other groups able to employ some means to prevent their rivals from overwhelming them. Let's be frank, the vast majority of the human population - currently extant and from the various ages for which we have history that's more than mere guesses - are and have been pawns in these power struggles, receiving more of less in the way of incidental advantages and disadvantages depending on the nature of the elite and the context (physical and metaphysical) of their times and places.

We like to pretend that we have representative government of some more fundamental or honest kind, with our modern Parliaments, Senates and the like. We're allowed to vote them in! In reality, these institutions wax and wane in how much they represent any of the interests of the commoners. Sometimes the commoners are no better than canon or factory fodder and sometimes they get a tranche of very fine benefits as, for example, as a citizen of many of the post WWII polities of the so-called First World. ..... Until lately.

Mass media, as you'll be all too aware, has a major propaganda function in every kind of polity including ours. It grooms the minds of the citizens or subjects so that most believe in the very limited choices on offer and very definitely in the status quo and it's elites. We can feel represented even when we're not, really. It all depends on what's often called "the national interest" - a construct of the ruling elites that seeks to align the beliefs of voters with the interests of the elite, not the other way 'round.

In some conditions, where the reality of a lack of representation of citizens' interests is but poorly obscured, distractions are manufactured, as a form of camouflage. Currently we have the Tory Party and its "war on woke", for example. Brexit was a rather successful distraction, which also served other machinations of the elite-in-power (their desire to rid themselves of pesky fetters on their "businesses").

Cugel

[Jdsk]

Your taking this discussion off down how wise was leaving the EU. It's not somewhere I want to go as it tends to get irrational very quickly in my experience.

The issue facing the government is we have indeed left . What do they do, to combat a situation of which Brexit is only a component part not the whole problem

My emboldening. No, I'm not.

I'm saying what we should do now from the position that we're in now.

Which appears to be undo a big chunk of Brexit, which amounts to the same discussion. It's politically impossible for the government to do that.as desired as it may be, it's not going to happen, so...

It's perfectly possible for the UK government to improve the trade agreements with the EU and the USA. The remnants of the current government might choose not to, and it may be that the best that we can hope for is that it doesn't make them worse. I expect a subsequent coalition or Labour government to look for actual improvements.

This is the time to discuss those improvements.

Jonathan

[reohn2]

.......I'm not in a position to come up with a ten year plan in the next 10 minutes

The Tories haven't been able to come up with 10minute plan in over ten years!

[Stevek76]

Those manual devaluations were done when the currency was pegged, either directly or indirectly (via USD) to the gold standard. Those manual devaluations were only good in the sense that they had become necessary because the economy had been sufficiently badly managed to require them or because the gold standard prevented the natural gradual devaluation of currencies via 'normal' inflation.

With UK now being a fiat currency then the second element is self correcting and irrelevant, any sharp devaluation as well as longer term declines vs other fiat currencies largely indicates a country that is becoming poorer, mostly through economic mismanagement, or self foot shooting decisions (e.g. brexit)

I'm not in anyway supporting truss economics. But what they are doing is very close to Keynesian economics, which it's self is very similar to the economics of 1930s Germany.

It has a track record of getting counties out of recession/depression before eating it's self.

Effectively de valuing the Pound by stealth is not always a bad thing. It puts up the price of imports but makes exports less exspensive

The alternative was to increase taxes considerably and that's not always a good thing economically either

What they are doing is absolutely not keynesian economics (or basically mainstream economics as it is now). Keynes would not be advocating running a significant deficit on revenue in the current conditions and certainly would not be advocating tax cuts as a method of doing so.

Tax cuts, particularly those skewed to the already wealthy is economically illiterate, the multiplier on such a spend (and it is a spend as it's increasing the deficit) is well under 1 (because the wealthy will just stash it away, inflating asset prices but doing nothing to grow the economy). If running a deficit on revenue spending is the order of the day then that is far better done by spending on public services that have a high multiplier (health, transport, etc). This would also come with the added bonus of stopping those services falling to pieces, which they currently are.

As it is, whilst keynesian economics would have run a deficit post 2008 (rather than cuts, which as we saw, actually just made the debt even worse), in other situations, borrowing is generally only considered justified for capital spend.

As for taxes, they absolutely should be raised right now, particularly on wealth. Not only because the current level of inequality in the UK is deeply unhealthy on a societal level, but because a large excess of £s squirreled away in wealth is really not helping the inflationary pressures.

[jois]

My emboldening. No, I'm not.

I'm saying what we should do now from the position that we're in now.

Which appears to be undo a big chunk of Brexit, which amounts to the same discussion. It's politically impossible for the government to do that.as desired as it may be, it's not going to happen, so...

It's perfectly possible for the UK government to improve the trade agreements with the EU and the USA. The remnants of the current government might choose not to, and it may be that the best that we can hope for is that it doesn't make them worse. I expect a subsequent coalition or Labour government to look for actual improvements.

This is the time to discuss those improvements.

Jonathan

I'm not expecting a labour government any time soon, their ability to turn a 10point lead in to an election loss is considerable.

It's therefore very hypothetical in my opinion what they may chose to do in another decade or so.

To be clear I'm not a fan of Brexit so arguing it was stupid with me is kicking an open door. Nor am I a Tory voter.

I am however a democrat so I accept democratic out comes which include Brexit and the current government. The Labour party is letting down the working class by their complete inability not to shoot themselves in the foot