As clocks struck midnight on Jan. 1, the United Kingdom officially left the European Union. The U.K.’s formal and final exit from the EU and its trading bloc follows a four-year period during which it tried to negotiate a trade agreement to make up for the expected trade deficit from leaving the union. Finally, on Dec. 24, 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the United Kingdom had agreed to a trade deal with the EU, getting tariff and quota-free access for exported goods.
But the new trade agreement does not do for the United Kingdom what Brexit advocates hoped it would do. As policy experts and economists warned, the U.K. will be facing a deficit that could endanger its economic growth. In 2019, about 71 percent of the U.K.’s GDP was generated by the services sector. Previous access that U.K. companies had to a much larger EU market is suddenly unavailable.
