Are weapons one of our biggest exports?

No.

Well, not first glance.

Writing from the UK here, if you look at the latest government data they put the value of all our defence exports at £7.9 billion in 2020.

Now, £7.9 billion sounds like a lot, and it is. But compare it to our biggest exports. In the same year we exported £121 billion of business services and £64 billion of Financial Services. Alongside these the defence industry looks relatively small.

And just to be clear these are defence exports to our main regular trading partners, so this is before the war in Ukraine.

I tried to find another industry that is a similar size to compare it to — but couldn’t really. But beverages come close. We sold £6.8 billion pounds worth of beverages (mostly alcoholic). Which isn’t all that much less than weapons.

When I hear a statistic like that I’m hopeful, perhaps we could sell less weapons and more wine (although hopefully not at the same time).

Perhaps?

It’s just many of the countries we buy the things we really need right now, like oil, might not sell us oil if we don’t sell them guns.

If you are wondering who the country is that we sell the most weapons to — it’s Saudi Arabia (same for the US). You might be concerned…