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by WJW 3476 days ago
Nations typically publish GDP numbers in their own currency. To compare them you would have to convert them to a common base. Since the Brexit vote result has become known, the GBP has fallen to its lowest level since 1985. This would harm its ranking in a comparison like this.

A low pound is good for British exports and tourism to the UK, but harms British buying power of imported goods. If it's good or bad depends on your viewpoint, I guess.

1 comments

> A low pound is good for British exports and tourism to the UK

Tourism perhaps, not that good for exports when we have to import all the stuff we use to make the exports and/or most of your exports are service based.

If 75% of the value of a good is from the imported raw materials and the rest is added by the processing applied in the UK then the remaining 25% benefits from the weaker Pound when the good is exported and the rest of is net unaffected by the change except to the extent that capital requirements effectively go up for the value of the intermediate goods in the supply line.
Absolutely but in the short term you have to buy your raw materials at a cost that is now much higher (temporarily) which can be a nasty shock for companies and something we've seen here.