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A model constructed by John Springford of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank with offices in both London and Brussels, concludes that goods trade is 11% lower than it would otherwise have been, on top of an earlier 10% fall since the referendum.

Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, tweeted that “trade deals don’t do very much for aggregate GDP either positively or negatively” because the main benefits come from reducing tariffs, which are already quite low.

“This is an attempt to stabilize the situation,” Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, told CNBC Wednesday. “The slogan from the Americans has been that they want predictability and stability in the relationship and it has been on a downward spiral, things have been getting worse.”

“While it was totally possible for the U.K. to do a deal with Australia and not jeopardize its ability to enter into a deep veterinary agreement with the EU, it will be interesting to see whether the U.K. chooses to diverge from EU approaches anyway so as to make it more difficult for this or a future government to reintegrate with the EU. A ratchet, of sorts,” said Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.

"The language on China certainly goes much further than anything NATO has said before,” Ian Bond, Director of Foreign Policy at the think tank the Centre for European Reform, told Euronews. “I think this does reflect an increasing realisation that China is developing in ways that we hadn’t hoped for and perhaps we didn’t expect a few years ago when the talk was of China becoming a responsible stakeholder in the international system.”