Great Britain is being battered socially and economically by the global pandemic, which can't really be blamed on Great Britain, since the pandemic is, well, global. Its economic effects are expected to be temporary, whatever "temporary" means in this seemingly endless plague. Because of government interventionist programs, mass unemployment and major business failures were avoided, and the U.K.'s economy was coming back from pre-pandemic levels, much as the world was. Ultimately, the effects of covid on the nation's GDP would be roughly — and again, temporarily — 2%, said the data.
But well before the pandemic struck, the U.K. decided to do something entirely to itself, and for the long term: Brexit. And the following, one can say, is the devastating effect of Trumplike nationalism.
In late October, Britain's Office for Budget Responsibility concluded, as one macroeconomics professor put it for the Guardian, "so far, so bad." The office estimated that "the long-term impact of Brexit will be more than twice as great as Covid. It thinks that Brexit will reduce UK productivity, and hence GDP per capita, by 4%" (emphasis, mine). Other economists put GDP loss at 6%.
This, however, was the columnist's choicest line — one on the reasonable simplicity of some economic theories, forecasts and models: "The principle that increasing barriers to trade and labour mobility between two large trading partners will reduce trade and migration, and that this will, in general, reduce economic welfare on both sides – but especially for the smaller partner – isn’t really at issue." To put that, too, in the vernacular, Duh!
Yet certain British politicians — goaded by Trump and Trumpian nationalism — promised their constituents no pain. This will be easy, they said; we'll simply replace our European trade agreement with individual trade agreements around the world. (There is still no trade deal between the U.S. and Great Britain.) Meanwhile, not one economic model could validate such a reality. If nothing else, economic theory presaged Brexit's disaster, and a disaster it is.
So there was and is covid, but its presence is not permanent. Notes the column-writing professor: "Brexit is, by its nature, a long-term issue. Just as it took decades for the UK to see the full benefits of EU membership, we’ll still be discussing the economic impacts of Brexit long after I’ve retired.... So far, it looks as if, from an economic perspective, Covid is for Christmas, while Brexit is for life."
I recall having read Brexit apologists such as Andrew Sullivan on this side of the Atlantic. All would be well, they said: "So far, so good," they said; Britain had a right to shut itself off from the world and yet somehow remain an integral part of it, they said; the British people had a right to self-determination, they said — and there, they were all-too wrongfully right. In short, nationalism would overcome. It could overcome.
I wonder what they're saying now.
Of greater concern, though, is what a return to such Trumplike stupidity would mean for the United States. Unfortunately, a large portion of Trump's stupidity is still with us: our departure from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. President Biden's hands have been tied by the congressional left, but he'd be wise to bust those shackles and rejoin the TPP.