UK balance of trade in goods with EU and rest of world worsens in Q3

The UK trade figures for the 3rd Quarter of 2013 and for September were released late last week. chancellor George Osborne’s original aim (as expressed in his Mais lecture of February 2010) to rebalance the UK economy away from debt-fuelled “growth” and into greater investment and exports has yet to happen.  Here are the trade in goods figures in charts for the EU countries and non-EU ones. The long-term gently undulating downward slide in the balance with our EU partners has accelerated sharply , while the improvement since late 2011 in the balance with the rest of world has reversed, at least for the moment.  Since the (positive) balance of trade in services is quite stable, the overall trade balance is worsening again.