George Osborne set a target of increasing our exports to £1.0 trillion by 2020, a figure that has been abandoned by the new Department for International Trade (HERE).
Bear in mind we export about £480 bn (2014 figures) compared to Germany which exports about £1.2 trillion. I am not surprised we have given up. Germany produces excellent products that are more often than not the best available. Buyers beat a path to the door of German companies. We have very few equivalent world leading manufacturers.
The Germans have an advantage. They have some of the best minds in engineering but also a huge and extremely loyal home market. Germans buy German. This gives them a good base from which to develop class leading products. It then has the effect of creating a sophisticated market and a virtuous circle. Manufacturers compete fiercely to be the best, leading to more innovative solutions and better products and a more highly developed market, and so on.
This builds up a great deal of interlocking expertise in one place. Years of trade surpluses and long term thinking have given them tremendous investment in automation both in Germany and abroad. Many of the mittelstand own factories in China, North and South America as well as other European countries. For us to match this would take many years - even if we recognised what our problem is. And I see no sign we have even done this yet.
In my experience, UK companies are always keen to source from abroad because home built things are too often not very good either in looks, quality or reliability and sometimes in all three!
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