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Sir Kerr Starmer uses a long -term statistical statistic to support his attempts to ward off the threatened Donald Trump tariff, relying on US data that shows that the UK is one of the few major economies that America has a trade surplus.
British ministers focus on American data in their discussions with the Trump administration officials, because its methodology is more beneficial for their cause of UK statistics.
“The use of US private trade data provides a common and strong basis when engaging in discussions with our American friends,” said a senior British official.
According to the United States' figures, America turned a total trade surplus with the United Kingdom in 2023, reaching $ 14.5 billion. This puts Britain in a positive position as Trump threatens the definitions targeting the two countries with a large deficit.
However, the National Statistical Office states that the UK ran a trade surplus with the United States worth 71.4 billion pounds, or about 89 billion dollars, in 2023.
Trump threatened the punitive definitions of countries in which the United States runs a commercial deficit, although his focus appears to be goods instead of services.
While the largest part of the United Kingdom's trade balance with the United States is the services, in 2023, the country has informed a small surplus in the trade of goods with the United States about 3 billion dollars. This still contradicts the 9.7 billion dollar merchandise trade surplus USA's reports with the United Kingdom.
Starmer and Word Mandleson, the new ambassador to the United Kingdom in Washington, argues that Trump should avoid Britain from any public application of definitions, given the center of trading between the two countries.
Statistical offices throughout the Atlantic Ocean are aware of the differences, and cooperation has been cooperated with data reorganization since 2017. Both have highlighted how the differences are greater when measuring trade in services.
ONS warned that the inception of trade is common and the differences “can be caused by a set of conceptual differences and measurement between the practices of the appreciation of different countries.”
There is a major issue in the numbers of the United Kingdom and the United States is the treatment of the dependency of the crown and the three external islands in the British islands that have self -government property in the British crown.
The US Economic Analysis Office includes the trade with Jersey, Jerusalese and the island of Man in the UK data, while ons not.
Given that Jersey alone hosts more than 35,000 financial companies running more than 450 billion pounds in assets, this omission has a material impact.
US reports export $ 4.8 billion in services to the United Kingdom more than its imports, while the UK claims to export approximately 70 billion pounds to the United States more than its import.
The UK said that the exclusion of crown dependency from trade data in the United Kingdom is in line with the European Accounts System.
American Statistics Office He said “It will explore the feasibility of modifying their data collection tools to exclude these dependencies from their geographical definition of the United Kingdom.” This is something that many UK officials may not want to happen yet.
and analysis Through HM Revenue & Customs in the lack of consistency of trade in the United States of America on vehicles, it appears to be not prolonged the problem.
Before 2022, the American goods that have cleared European Union customs were calculated in another country of the European Union before they came to the United Kingdom as European imports. This makes it difficult to compare American data.
“This explains the negative asymmetry,” and mentioned the analysis.
The study indicates a negative asymmetry when US vehicle exports to the UK are greater than UK's corresponding imports from the United States.
From 2022, UK imports from the United States on the basis of the country of origin must be compared to US exports to the United Kingdom. The analysis concluded that “instead, there is no positive consistency in 2022, which cannot be explained.”
