However, even if nations as a whole benefit from international trade, not every single person or company is necessarily better off.
In the planning scenario of the update of the Economic and Financial Planning Document the budget balance adjusted to take account of the economic cycle and one-off measures improves by 0.2 percentage points of GDP in 2008 and by about 0.7 points in each year of the three subsequent years, going from structural net borrowing of 2.1 per cent of GDP in 2008 to close to balance in 2011.