Borders, Blockchain, and Brexit

If the UK is excluded from the EU common market (as is likely), exporters will need to reduce the costs of their goods to compete with their market contemporaries. While the quality of UK exports remains outstanding in critical areas such as art, textiles, and jewellery, large scale exporters will have the luxury of absorbing many of the costs resulting from their exclusion from the common market. On the other hand, SMEs, which are critical to the UK economy, will find such barriers to trade prohibitive in all cases and detrimental in many. 

Simultaneously, the UK government is investing billions in promoting exports outside of the common market and has set an ambitious target of doubling exports by 2020 to amounts exceeding 1 trillion GBP. While this move seems contradictory to current public policies, private sector innovators have stepped in to bridge the divide between principle and policy. Such initiatives have helped change the trade balance from 54% in 2000 to 43% in 2016 with the EU as trade with China, India, New Zealand, and the United States has strengthened. 

Broader trends such as Brexit, isolationism, and stagnant nostalgia hold the British public and economy in a period of slow growth and a lack of consumer confidence. However, young, entrepreneurial and tech-savvy Britons have turned to novel forms of trade and communication as they continue to forge an international footprint for the historically outward facing empire.

At the helm of the movements, fintech, e-trading and internet communities have surged in activity and growth as young Britons seek a platform for their continued global ambitions. Brexit has made the cumbersome and resource-intensive labyrinth of regulations, intermediaries, and corporations comprising the exclusive world of international trade visible for the first time to a generation with little patience for redundant forms. 

As a crisis looms on the horizon, tech-savvy entrepreneurs have seen opportunity in leveraging newer forms of trade and communication to bridge the old divide long subject to political whims. The fintech industry in the UK has generated more than 6.6 billion USD in 2018, accounting for 11% of the global fintech market. Export Portal has acted as a pioneer of this new world order eliminating the need for the banks, networks and established and inequitable gatekeepers. Blockchain technology has made the relationships between importers and exporters both transparent and current. 

Export Portal has led this trend by providing an open B2B platform through which British national wares can enjoy clear visibility, access, and competition while eliminating the ancillary costs of agents, intermediaries, and redundant importers. In doing so, the platform, established in California, has the potential to provide a vital lifeline across the English Channel into the broader marketplace and to maintain the hard-won global footprint paved by generations of British merchants and the vibrant cultural heritage which has been their legacy.