'It's official: just when Germany expected us to head for the EU exit door, it seems we're their biggest trading partner.

According to recently released Bundesbank figures, the UK has now overtaken France as Germany's biggest global trade partner - with trade between the two countries hitting €153bn in the first 9 months of 2012.'

- er, no, it's not 'official'. The official statistics source for Germany is the Statistisches Bundesamt, 'Destatis'(www.destatis.de).

According to Destatis, the UK is not Germany's largest trading partner, but the fifth largest, at 110 billion euros combined imports and exports value, compared to Germany's largest trade partner, France, at 168 bn euros, and behind The Netherlands, China and the United States, as of full year 2011. see:

https://www.destatis.de/DE/ZahlenFakten/GesamtwirtschaftUmwelt/Aussenhandel/Handelspartner/Tabellen/RangfolgeHandelspartner.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

The discrepancy between the Bundesbank's figures and the official German statistics body's figures is the Buba figures will probably include services; Destatis only records goods, or visibles. The trouble with including services is that they are highly nebulous and varying. Putting one day's worth of foreign exchange trading through London or Frankfurt in the figures would swamp the visibles figure, to no good end.

Strip out the casino element of The City of London from the UK's services component trade data and the picture would not look very rosy. The truth is Germany's economy is still built on real goods, not nebulous, ephemeral services, and it is best to gauge real inter country trade with goods data.

'Nonetheless, it's welcome news for UK plc, and coincides with a rise in British goods exports to Germany by 20% over the first 3 quarters, despite the continued economic gloom.'

What is your source for this 20% rise in the value of export of goods to Germany over the first 3 quarters? According to the official UK statistics body, ONS, the value of exports to Germany comparing Jan-Sep 2012 to Jan-Sep 2011 actually fell, by £0.3 bn, or by 1.2%, as follows:

2011
Q1 £7.7 bn
Q2 £8.1 bn
Q3 £8.4 bn

2012
Q1 £8.3 bn
Q2 £8.0 bn
Q3 £7.6 bn

source: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_295724.pdf

The figures for Q4 2012 are now available, and likewise show a fall, not a rise, for the value of goods exported from the UK to Germany, between 2011 and 2012, from £8.363 bn to £8.312 bn. When one factors in real inflation running at around 8% into these not adjusted for inflation figures, between 2011 and 2012, then actually the real value of goods exported to Germany by the UK over the last year has fallen by around 10%, not the 20% rise stated here.

Could someone with half a wit at the Birmingham Post or Mirror Group newspapers please review this contributor's 'work'. There is nothing worse, given all our problems, than making policy from false data and 'facts' as a starting point. At least insist on getting the basics right, before the usual overblown policy demands made in these 'expert' contributors blogs.

Lastly, this contributor again boldly stated this:

'Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the key UK export markets to Germany is car components - with the Midlands a key player.'

If he'd bothered to think a bit before writing, he would, should have known that this 'UK' export of car components to Germany from the Midlands, is actually in large part German. I mean the Hams Hall BMW engine factory. Yes, the factory is in the UK, and in the Midlands, but is wholly owned by BMW, and would not have existed at all if it wasn't for BMW owning Rover Group in the 1990s. The factory was conceived to supply its Rover Cars division's engine needs. When the decision to sell Rover was made in 2000 the plant was too far gone to pull the plug on. The plant now produces around half a million engines, with around three-quarters going for export, the rest to MINI at Oxford.

This plant alone is responsible for around £1 billion in 'UK' exports each year to Germany. Let's not kid ourselves though. Hams Hall is at the end of the day wholly foreign owned and controlled, in this case by the Germans, only exists due to a quirk, and in the future could easily be relocated to a lower wage cost country, in a similar way that an increasing amount of MINI production is happening outside of BMW Oxford. Once you lose control and ownership of your own industry you become just a pawn to be bargained off against others.

Hello there! This article could not be written much better!
Looking through this post reminds me of my previous
roommate! He constantly kept talking about this. I am going to forward this information to him.
Fairly certain he'll have a good read. Thank you for sharing!

Would you be interested in exchanging links?

Hey I am so thrilled I found your blog,
I really found you by error, while I was researching on Digg for something else, Nonetheless
I am here now and would just like to say cheers for a fantastic
post and a all round exciting blog (I also love the theme/design),
I don't have time to browse it all at the moment but I have bookmarked it and also added in your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read a great deal more, Please do keep up the awesome work.

ちなみにペン先の太さは、細い順番から EF → F → M → B → BB の順番になります。