A lot of international trade is other goods. Think of how much the UK has paid for things like American aircraft, ships, machinery, or materials used in manufacturing. Our armed forces use a lot of American stuff, and often even British made things have American parts (and a lot of it is covered by ITAR, to an even greater extent than the rest of Europe).
People also tend to hugely underestimate the amount of British manufacturing for the same reason, and because of lot of it is Foreign branded (e.g. Nissan cars).
I certainly don't need planes, war stuff nor ships and machinery. The food I eat mostly come from my country, my car is made in countries close to mine and so are the materials used to repair my house... And my gaz is Poutine's.
How much American media do you consume? Things like movies, tv shows, or music? Or is it mostly home grown? That's America's export, along with software.
As a UK non-citizen resident, my observation is that our economy is pretty much involved with USA (and the global economy more generally).
I just looked up the latest trade and investments factsheet[1] and there are some interesting deets. If you're wondering about direct investment in the US as well as imports:
- Total UK imports from United States amounted to £111.5 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2024 (a decrease of 5.1% or £5.9 billion in current prices, compared to the four quarters to the end of Q3 2023).
- In 2023, the outward stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) from the UK in United States was £494.1 billion accounting for 26.7% of the total UK outward FDI stock.
In addition to direct investment I would also count portfolio investment since we're sort of involved at an individual level through our workplace pensions (and/or personal), savings, stocks and shares ISAs, and so on. A preliminary report[2] foreign holdings of US securities as of June 2024 puts the UK as the top holder at over 3 trillion USD.
>Total UK imports from United States amounted to £111.5 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2024 (a decrease of 5.1% or £5.9 billion in current prices, compared to the four quarters to the end of Q3 2023).
Also "Total UK exports to United States amounted to £182.6 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2024 (a decrease
of 0.5% or £889 million in current prices, compared to the four quarters to the end of Q3 2023);"
Which is why the current government is being particularly cautious at the moment.
I think that's what they're trying to fix. They want stuffs around you that says "Made in China(PRC)" to instead say "Made in USA", and everyone is saying that that is a really weird hill to die on, but they want to.
HP oscilloscopes were pretty good too, back when . But I haven't been there for many years, and I guess you can get good, cheap, LCD ones today for much less money.
And rotating rusty hard drives, I suppose. But still all gone.
I was thinking about this, outside of services the only thing I do buy is Park Tool bike tools (which are excellent).
I suppose I could include Apple products on the basis that the majority of the profits go to the US rather than the country of manufacture. Apple sells £1.5b of goods and services in the UK although that won't appear in the UK-US trade figures.
