Column: Market review
Europe, North America and China: The future and is Brexit at all relevant Introduction The European Union (EU) now comprises 28 member states covering...
bySteve AUBERTIN
Europe, North America and China: The future and is Brexit at all relevant
Introduction
The European Union (EU) now comprises 28 member states covering an area of 4.4 million square kilometres, containing 510 million people with a combined GDP of €14,700 billion. As an economic bloc it is second only to the USA and is almost half as big again as China. Total EU trade with the rest of the world was just over €3,500 billion in 2015 – almost 25 % of the combined GDP; nearly 18 % of that trade was with the USA and 15 % was with China. Overall, the EU maintains an even trade balance with imports and exports both in the order of €1.7 trillion; however, individual countries vary from this. The EU imports twice the value of goods as it exports to both China and Russia.
Table 1. Comparison – basic statistics 2015
Various published sources
As can be seen from Table 1, there are very few similarities between any of the three regions (Europe, North America and China); however, together these account for 64 % of the global market for transformers. This is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Global transformer market by region 2016
What is interesting to note, and will be explored in more detail in this article, is that these three blocs operate as almost stand-alone self-contained markets.
Various published sources
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