NOTE TO SELF: TrumpChaos in a BREXIT Mirror
Is the best analogy to the chaos-monkey international trade politics Trump has embarked upon the example of BREXIT? And, if so, what does that tell us?...
BREXIT was chaos and disruption—pointless chaos and disruption—to the United Kingdom’s integration into the European and through that the global economy. A tariff hit, but also a red-tape hit, and a chaos hit.
As I understand it, credible estimates of the BREXIT hit to the UK economy are:
The Centre for European Reform says 5.5% of GDP…
Bloomberg Economics says 4% of GDP…
Cambridge Econometrics projects a long-run 10.1% of GDP…
The Office for Budget Responsibility says 4% of GDP…
And, eyeballing, it is very hard to make a case that those numbers are an underestimate:
Trump’s international economic policy is also pointless disruption—chaos-monkey policy. Yes, the United States’s economy is (marginally) less integrated with the economies of its trading partners. But the divergences in relative factor prices vis-à-vis its major trading partners than vis-à-vis the United Kingdom’s tell us that it is highly likely that the surplus per unit of integration is greater.
So will the net damaging effect of ChaosTrump on the United States economy be greater of less than the effect of BREXIT on the United Kingdom economy?
Anybody with good ideas about how to assess:
The actual effect of BREXIT on the UK…
The relative international-economic integration levels of the US & UK…
The relative surplus per unit of integration of the US & UK…
The likely magnitude of TrumpChaos vs. BREXIT…
Please chime in. I really need to get a handle on this. I am supposed to be a trained professional. And yet I do not have a handle on this right now.
References:
Authers, John. 2025. “How Stupd Is This Trade War?: Let Me Count the Ways”. Bloomberg. February 2. <https://public.hey.com/p/cd9H9benuVNAmPgZLeEbLSiF>.
Bui, Ha, & al. 2024. “London’s Economy After BREXIT: Impacts & Implications”. Cambridge Econometrics. January. <https://www.camecon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/GLA_Impacts-of-Brexit-report_Final.pdf>.
FRED. 2025. “Real GDP per Capita, US & UK; 2016:1=00”. February 8. <https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA#>.
Hagopian, Alicja, & Kate Devlin. 2025. “The damning statistics that reveal the true cost of Brexit, five years on”. Independent. January 31. <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-cost-statistics-numbers-five-years-eu-b2689655.html>.
Springford, John. 2022. “The cost of Brexit to June 2022”. Center for European Reform. December 21. <https://www.cer.eu/insights/cost-brexit-june-2022>