Turning the tide: the government has an important role in assisting world-class manufacturing to be at the very heart of the UK's economy

摘要

Turning the tide on manufacturing will be no easy task. In common'with other industrialised countries the share of manufacturing in the economy has fallen. In the UK, however, the share of manufacturing in GDP fell to slightly more than 10 per cent in 2008. This was a far more precipitate fall than in competitor countries. It would be unwise to promise that we could reverse all the structural factors that have led to industry's declining share of output and employment in Western economies. But if these trends were so inevitable, why was Germany only overtaken (by China) as the world's largest exporter in 2010?