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by EmbarrassedFuel 2426 days ago
Don’t take everything at face value: a fall in Sterling necessarily means that an exporters products are cheaper overseas, so should boost sales. Unless their costs were already higher than their revenues, in which case they were doomed anyway. The reason brexit will be bad for exporters is the possible future imposition of tariffs. This hasn’t happened yet, so actually in the short term brexit is relatively good for them. Just to be clear I’m against brexit, however in this case blaming brexit for the failure is wrong.
2 comments

This hasn’t happened yet, so actually in the short term brexit is relatively good for them.

Except that isn't born out by the figures, UK manufacturing is weakening at the moment. The pound might be delivering higher profits on foreign trade but it isn't delivering more orders yet.

Yes, but equally it means that imports are more expensive. We can interpret the statement as implying that the company imports a lot of parts, etc. Let's remember that Ireland uses the Euro so they just need to import from across the border to feel the pinch.
If their finished product costs less than its constituent parts, they're kind of doing manufacturing wrong.
This manufacturer is in Northern Ireland, so they can use Euros if they want anyway. And current plans are for a frictionless border. The argument as Brexit causing it to close is silly, its grossly mismanaged.