Vote Leave supporters celebrated on the streets chanting, take back control.

However, today only 33% of British citizens think Brexit was a good idea.

To date, Brexit is estimated to have cost the United Kingdom 160 billion pounds of economic And as citizens catch up with the harsh realities of decoupling from the EU, many Brexit cheerleaders are changing their tune.

What once was seen as a beacon of hope has now turned into an economic nightmare.

So we ask the question, was Brexit worth it?

To answer this question, we will explore the impact of Brexit across 1.

Trade, 2.

Foreign Investment, and 3.

Immigration.

At the end, we will decide whether Brexit was worth it.

When it comes to trade, the EU offers members material trade benefits.

For one, there are no duties or tariffs on goods and services moving between member nations.

But possibly more important, there is no red tape that makes trade difficult.

The post-Brexit transition period ended on December 31, 2020, with the signing of the TCA.

Boris Johnson claimed that this would establish better trade deals with the EU and open Britain for increased trade with the rest of the world.

But was that true?

Well, not exactly.

You see, since leaving the EU, the UK's export volumes have materially lagged all advanced economies.

And trade intensity lags all other G7 countries.

But what exactly is causing this?

Let's first look at red tape.

Since Brexit, 80% of British registered businesses face difficulties exporting to the EU.

It got so bad that the British Chamber of Commerce claimed that it was easier to trade with more distant countries than with Europe.

Why is this?

When Britain was under the EU, borders meant nothing.

Businesses could go and come as they pleased.

And since regulations were all consistent, paperwork and red tape were non-existent.

But now that there is a hard border between the EU and the UK, red tape has exponentially increased.

Large businesses are able to handle this by setting up branches in the EU.

But small businesses are faced with the impossibility of understanding and complying with extremely complicated rules and regulations in a variety of different languages.

Similarly, EU countries don't want to deal with the headache and are opting for non-British products to avoid any confusion.

And who can blame them?

To make matters worse, the UK has chosen to reinvent the wheel when it comes to standards regulations.

For instance, instead of adopting the EU's classification system for chemicals, Britain, in its infinite wisdom, decided to create their own system.

What's the benefit here?

None.

All this has done is created more confusion, more red tape, and required businesses to invest millions of dollars on reclassification.

But this isn't just limited to red tape.

Historically, there were no tariffs and duties.

Now, there are a ton.

But Brexit supporters would argue that the UK has now established new agreements and trade with other countries around the world.

They have set up new agreements with Australia, New Zealand, India, Israel, and more.

And by not relying on the EU so much, Britain has opened itself up to more opportunity.

Well, not exactly.

Although trade with non-EU countries has increased, it has not done enough to offset the declines in goods and service trade with the EU.

Over the long term, this might be corrected, but only time will tell.

And frankly, the UK does not have that much to offer the rest of the world and is a relatively small market outside of financial services.

So what's the conclusion on economic activity?

Brexit is a failure.

Okay, let's move on to foreign direct investment, otherwise known as FDI.

FDI is important because it raises national productivity, output, and wages.

The UK was uniquely positioned among EU countries in that it had a strong banking system, access to the Eurozone, and most importantly, it spoke English.

As such, investment into UK businesses was rising rapidly, leading up to the Brexit vote.

But right after the vote, investment dropped dramatically.

Businesses were spooked by the uncertainty of Brexit and decided to invest elsewhere.

To understand the impact that Brexit had on FDI, we can look at the results of other advanced economies.

Since 2016, the UK has underperformed all G7 economies on business investment growth by a long shot.

Brexit cheerleaders will argue that UK is still number two in absolute terms, only behind would be 12 billion pounds more per year, and that Britain would lead Europe in FDI, and more importantly, lead their arch nemesis, France.

Furthermore, all industry segments in Britain have seen a decline in FDI, whereas the EU has seen an increase across all segments.

Unlike trade, the negative impacts of FDI are slow to accumulate.

However, economists estimate that lower FDI has already contributed to 29 billion pounds of lost The reason for declining FDI is very, very simple.

The UK has lost its advantage.

It is no longer part of the largest trading bloc in the world, and it doesn't have the most educated or trained workforce.

It doesn't have much in the way of natural resources, and all it really has is a financial center and the English language.

But that isn't enough anymore, because there are tons of those around the world.

So what's the conclusion on FDI?

Brexit was a bad idea.

Lastly, let's take a look at immigration.

Frankly, this might be the single biggest reason Brexit supporters wanted to leave.

They were sick and tired of Britain looking less British.

The direct impact of Brexit was to end free movement among EU countries.

Leading up to Brexit, net immigration peaked at 330,000 people per annum.

This dropped by 25% following Brexit, so it seemed like it was working.

But if you look at current immigration trends, it has jumped above historical immigration levels, exceeding 700,000 net migrants.

Although EU migration levels have dropped, non-EU levels have increased substantially more.

This has been driven by a number of factors, including international student flows, healthcare workers, and refugees.

This sharp increase has caused a rift in the Conservative party, with lawmakers saying things like the rise was completely unacceptable and will be unacceptable as well to the majority of British people.

Rishi Sunak himself said that the number was too high.

So why the high immigration then?

The UK has a labor shortage and an aging population.

Both of these combined are placing a lot of pressure on businesses, especially in healthcare and hospitality.

To make matters worse, the UK doesn't have the most productive economy, and its decline in trades and foreign investment have further placed pressure on industry.

Overall, the UK has little to no choice but to maintain high levels of immigration in line with or above pre-Brexit levels.

To make matters worse, India, Nigeria, and China make up the largest immigrant groups into the UK.

Not very British looking if you ask me.

So the conclusion on immigration?

Brexit has failed.

Unless, of course, you love immigration, in which case it's succeeded.

All right, what's the conclusion here?

We started by asking, was Brexit worth it?

To kick things off, we looked at trade.

On trade, Brexit has led to Britain lagging all advanced economies, and it has added more red tape, tariffs, and uncertainty.

Fail.

On investment, we saw that Britain has seen a decline in interest from foreign organizations, being overtaken by their sworn enemies, France.

Again, fail.

On immigration, we ironically saw it rise to historic highs with no end in sight.

Another fail.

And overall, the UK has lost nearly 200 billion pounds of economic activity, leading us to conclude that Brexit was a terrible, terrible idea, regardless of what Boris Johnson's bus told you.

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