The UK trade balance for goods is experiencing the widest deficit since records began. But don’t worry – the UK trade balance for services is in surplus by the most it’s ever been! This, a stark indicator of the UK’s diminishing presence as an exporter of goods and looming champion as an exporter of services  (think financial, legal and creative), has got people worried.

Of course, it’s ok that China is herself is ‘transitioning’ in much the same way, albeit trailing the UK and other developed nations. Where 0.5% UK growth is good and 6.9% Chinese growth is bad, we’re now seeing both a transitioning emerging market and a developed market that’s overshooting the runway as a bad thing! And I suppose it is – after all, who’s making all the stuff now? If growth concerns sprout from a lack of people making stuff, and that alone, then we are in trouble.

While nearly all the news wires are still buzzing with this increasingly difficult to keep up with word, ‘growth,’  it seems that growth is just what we could all do without right now. Just remember that, when people talk about the balance of trade, what they’re getting at is is a situation whereby the economy has some stuff and some services. That is the target, apparently, yet it’s materials and manufacturing that seem to contribute most to economic growth.

Such a balanced state of affairs remains somewhat lacking as we head into 2016 and that is certainly reflected in current market turmoil (confusingly now led by both miners and banks), and when investors start rushing into a safe haven in the Japanese Yen – despite being charged by the Bank of Japan to do so –  things look as if they’re getting even hotter.

There’s a reason we call it the UK trade balance. Something that’s balanced is going neither one way nor the other and it certainly can’t be growing. But if growth really comes from an imbalance, and that’s what we’ve got, then what’s the problem?! To be honest though, if you happened to peruse the cocktail menu at Chez George the other day, then surely growth would be sitting a little further down the league table of ‘hopes for 2016’ than plain, simple stability.

Augustin Eden, 9 Feb