DATA ANALYTICS

Effect of Brexit on UK’s import and exports

Data Analytics Using Tableau

Photo by Ibrahim Rifath on Unsplash

On the 31st day of January 2020, the United Kingdom (UK) officially withdrew from the European Union(EU) and the European Atomic Energy Community. Prior to that day, there were 28 member countries of the EU who carried out trade amongst other things within themselves.

The EU is the UK’s biggest trading partner accounting for 47% of the country’s total trades. The EU consumes about 42.6% of UK’s total exports while providing 51.8% of their total imports (visualcapitalist.com)

One of the greatest benefits of being part of the EU is free movement of goods, services, labour and finance which facilitates trade amongst member states.

On 1st May 2004, Hungary joined the EU. From 2007 to 2013, Hungary had access to EUR 22.5 Billion from the European Structural and Cohesion of the EU.

Intra-EU trade accounts for 82% of Hungary’s exports (Germany 27%, Romania, Slovakia, Austria and Italy all 5%), outside the EU 2% go to both the United States and Ukraine(europa.eu).

In terms of imports, 75% come from EU Member States (Germany 25%, Austria 6% and Poland and the Netherlands 5%), while outside the EU 6% come from China and 5% from Russia(europa.eu).

Now, with the withdrawal of the UK from EU it is expected that trade will be affected.

This analysis takes a look at the effect of UK’s withdrawal from the EU on its export and import trade. I made use of data from Makeovermonday which provided UK’s data. I analyzed the data using Tableau which is a visualization software.

Details of the analyses can be accessed here:

Graphs of UK’s Exports and Imports showing goods according to volume

The UK’s major exports are also their major imports which means that most of the goods imported are due to consumer’s wanting a difference in product style, seasonal trends, appeal to buy foreign goods etc and not because the country is not producing enough to sustain itself.

UK’s major exports and imports are: Machinery and Transport Equipment, Chemicals, Fuel, Material Manufacturing, Food and Live animals. Between 2019 and January 2021, there has been a steep decline in the amount o import and export.

Graph showing the difference between money spent on import and revenue derive from export through the years

Also, the difference in the amount of revenue generated from export to the expenditure on import has been at its highest with a spike between March to July 2020 which is due to the large amount of export in food, drugs and chemical due the Corona Virus Pandemic.

This analysis was hampered by the following limitations:

• The data’s timeline is only up to January 2021
• Bexit happened on 31st January 2020, by 15th February 2020, the UK went into its first lockdown due to the Corona pandemic
• By April 2021, businesses and offices are still not operating at full capacity and this has also impacted heavily on import and export activities therefore, the decline in import and export activities cannot be totally attributed to Brexit.

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