UK trade deficit falls to £3.5bn While eurozone economic activity may have bottomed out around October, it is still limited with little sign of any significant pick up. At least though, the U.S. avoiding going over the fiscal cliff and a recent easing of eurozone sovereign debt tensions has reduced the downside risks for UK exporters going forward. David Tinsley, BNP Paribas The big picture is fairly directionless. The deficit on goods and services has really just been fluctuating around £3bn or so for much of the last year. In some respects that is disappointing, because you would be looking for a rebalancing story to be showing up as an improvement in that position over time. Amit Kara, UBS The big picture is broadly flat. Our own view is that the eurozone will continue to disappoint therefore all the heavy lifting will have to be done by the UK consumer. I suspect what they confirm is that trade will act as a drag on the Q4 (GDP) numbers. If you look at the numbers on trade throughout 2012, it's quite evident that net trade was a drag on growth. We can only put that down to weakness in the eurozone. I wouldn't overdo the gloom. They weren't great numbers but were more or less in line with expectations. We didn't expect much from these numbers and didn't get much.