Trade trend since 2018
To assess the scale of the overall trade impact, we use a 2018 baseline. As ONS notes, 2018 was the last stable year of trade while the UK was still in the EU. Afterwards, Brexit negotiations and Covid disrupted trade patterns.
At first glance (see Figures 5.34 and 5.35), trade growth since 2018 looks healthy in current prices (shown in the bars) with exports up by 34.4% and imports up by 33.4%.
However, in real terms (shown by the line) growth was slow. Over the seven years to 2025, exports increased £65 billion (7.8%, equivalent to 1.1% a year). Imports were up by £88 billion (10.1% equivalent to 1.4% a year). In short, the UK’s recent trade performance has been poor.
Brexit has mattered but there have been other important factors: Covid, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, more recently, the Trump administration. The next section distils the Brexit impact and compares the UK with the G7.
The overall trend, for exports and imports, was slow growth 2022 to 2025, both in real terms and current prices.
Figure 5.34: UK exports of goods and services
Figure 5.35: UK imports of goods and services
There were marked differences between in the trade trends for goods and services, and for EU and non-EU trade (see Figure 5.36 for absolute changes in £ billion and Figure 5.37 for percentage changes).
The ONS data shows that, since 2018:
- UK goods trade with the EU has underperformed (grown less or shrank more) than trade with non-EU countries.
- goods exports to both regions shrank, but non-EU goods imports grew by much more than EU imports.
- UK services trade has outperformed goods trade – services exports have grown while goods exports have fallen. Similarly services imports have grown faster than goods imports.
2025 trade vs 2018
Between 2018 and 2025, the key figures were:
- For exports:
- the £116 billion (29%) increase in services exports hid a fall of £51 billion (-12%) in goods exports;
- the £58 billion (12%) increase in non-EU exports dwarfed a £7 billion (2%) rise in exports to the EU;
- services non-EU exports grew by £75 billion (30%) and EU exports grew by £41 billion (27%);
- goods exports to the EU fell by £34 billion (-15%) and to the non-EU by £17 billion (-8%).
- For imports:
- services imports grew by £88 billion (10%) but goods imports grew by only £28 billion (5%);
- the £83 billion (21%) increase in non-EU imports outstripped a £5 billion rise in EU imports (1%);
- services non-EU imports grew by £48 billion (36%) and EU imports grew by £12 billion (9%);
- non-EU goods imports grew by £35 billion (13%) but EU imports fell by £7 billion (-2%).
Figure 5.36: UK changes in £ billions – 2025 vs 2018
Figure 5.37: UK changes in percentages – 2025 vs 2018
Source: ONS, Breakdown of Trade, March 2026
Impact of Brexit on trade with EU
The most recent analysis of the impact of Brexit on trade with the EU comes from the Centre for European Reform’s study published in June 2026. Figure 5.38 summarises the results.
They estimate that Brexit has substantially reduced UK trade with the EU in goods and services, and exports and imports:
- exports drop by 12% – goods by 16% and services by 7%
- imports drop by 16% – goods by 14% and services by 19%
- most of the losses result from leaving the single market, not the customs union
- virtually all categories of goods and services have been affected
The authors note that other studies do not always acknowledge the growth of trade within the EU since Brexit:
Trade flows within the EU rose between 2022 and 2024, as consumers spent their lockdown savings and businesses upgraded their machinery and equipment. Our key assumption is that, had the UK remained a member, its trade with the bloc would also have benefitted from this increase in intra-EU demand.
Figure 5.38: Impact of Brexit on UK trade with the EU
Impact of Brexit on UK vs G7
In an earlier 2025 report for the Federal Trust, John Springford reviewed several other independent studies and summarised them. The key findings for Q3 2023 found similar performance gaps for overall UK trade:
- by Q3 2023 the performance gap for exports was 15% and, for imports, was 13%. UK goods trade reduced by around 15%.
- Figures 5.39 and 5.40 from the report show that, since Brexit, UK trade has performed weakly compared to other economies in the G7 and a synthetic doppelgänger (an established statistical method).
An earlier CEPR study, covering the first two years of the TCA, found that Brexit had disproportionately affected smaller firms, causing some to stop to importing and/or exporting.
The OBR continues with its long-held position (based on the average of several independent studies) that it expects Brexit to cause exports and imports to both fall by 15%. In short, the results of those estimates seem to have been reliable.
Figure 5.39: Performance of UK exports against developed economies
Figure 5.40: Performance of UK imports against developed economies
Sources:
CER, The cost of Brexit, ten years on: The impact of leaving the customs union and single market on UK trade, June 2026
Federal Trust, John Springford, The economic impact of Brexit, nine years on: was the consensus right?, June 2025
CEPR, Rebecca Freeman et al, Deep integration and trade: UK firms in the wake of Brexit, December 2024
OBR, Brexit analysis, July 2025
Benefits of UK trade deals vs Brexit costs
The economic benefits of UK trade deals (FTAs) outside Europe are tiny compared to the huge costs of the TCA (see Figure 5.41). In other words, ‘Global Britain as a strategy for international trade is a fantasy’, as the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE put it.
The value of the estimated benefits in the distant future of the signed FTAs is about 0.44% of 2025 GDP of £3 trillion. This is roughly £13 billion of GDP compared to a cost of Brexit of £120 billion at 4% of GDP or £180 billion at 6%. Please note that the chart uses central estimates, which have a high degree of uncertainty. The 0.44% of GDP is made up of 0.28% for signed deals and 0.16% for an FTA with the US, which is still to be negotiated.
For the US, it shows HMG’s previous estimate of the economic value of an FTA with the US, but negotiations had stalled before the current Trump administration arrived. HMG has not provided an economic impact for the UK-US Economic Prosperity Deal of May 2025. However, Birmingham University estimated it will be worth about £6.5 billion in reduced tariff harm to UK GDP (about 0.23% of 2024 GDP).
On the cost of Brexit, the OBR estimated that about 40% of its 4% estimate (1.6%) had already happened when the TCA started in 2021. The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) estimated that the harm at July 2023 was already at 2% to 3% of GDP (independent of the effects from Covid or the war in Ukraine). The estimates are significantly lower than those of the well-regarded National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the US which assessed the impact of Brexit at between six and eight per cent of GDP – by the end of 2025.
As of June 2026, the UK had signed four FTAs:
- Australia on 16 December 2021
- New Zealand on 28 February 2022
- Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) on 15 December 2024.
- CPTPP is an FTA between eleven high-growth countries concentrated in the Asia Pacific. However, at the time of joining, the UK already had trade agreements with nine of the eleven: Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The two exceptions were Brunei and Malaysia.
- India on 24 July 2025
In addition, the UK has signed a digital trade agreement with Singapore in June 2022 (see below).
By June 2026, the EU had also signed trade deals with Australia, New Zealand and India, but not with the CPTPP. In addition, the EU had agreed a trade deal with the Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay) which has applied provisionally from 1 May 2026.
Figure 5.41: Benefit of trade deals relative to cost of Brexit
Sources:
Centre for Economic Performance, Brexit and UK Trade, June 2024
HMG impact assessments of UK trade deals with:
Australia (May 2020)
CPTPP (August 2024)
India (July 2025)
New Zealand (February 2022)
US (March 2020)
Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), The impact of Brexit on the UK economy: Reviewing the evidence, Jonathan Portes, 7 Jul 2023
National Bureau of Economic Research, The Economic Impact of Brexit, November 2025
Services trade agreements
In an important development for services trade, UK and Swiss authorities signed the “Berne Financial Services Agreement” on 21 December 2023, which is a mutual recognition agreement (MRA) providing enhanced market access for UK and Swiss firms to each other’s markets in specific financial services sectors. The MRA also commits the parties to ongoing regulatory and supervisory cooperation. HMG has not published an economic impact assessment.
In another services development, the UK and Singapore have signed a Digital Economy Agreement (DEA). As a result of the agreement, businesses and consumers can now benefit from: open digital markets, including guaranteed tariff-free flow of digital content, free flow of trusted data, guaranteed protections for personal data and intellectual property and cheaper trade through the adoption of digital trading systems. HMG has not published an impact assessment.
The Swiss and Singaporean agreements could form the basis of similar deals with other countries.