Its not that simple. The UK experts a lot of manufactured goods to exactly those sorts of countries, and imports a lot from the EU and the US.
What you say is true of cheap consumer goods, but remember everything else. Even with some consumer goods, its pretty even - the UK exports cars about as much as it imports (by value, not numbers though). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers...
Its other big goods exports are things that are not that visible to consumers.
Are you sure you want to get into everything else? Because I could've sworn we just had a major controversy with Vivek Ramaswamy running his mouth about the supposed laziness of American workers to justify racial discrimination against them through mass hiring of H1B workers... a stance so obviously wrong it forced his exit from the Trump administration. He certainly wasn't referring to people employed producing "cheap consumer goods", and there's nothing natural about the shift to the use of H1B labor. Just to be clear, though: This phenomenon is not unique to the United States. Imperialists everywhere try to pit one people against another to maintain power and extract maximum value for minimum input. Just once I'd like the bourgeoisie-adjacent to acknowledge political reality.
We were talking about the UK. Since Brexit immigration policy has shifted to favouring highly skilled workers, especially skills in short supply, over cheap labour.
There are definitely people here who think like that, and we do still import cheap labour for some things (difficult low paying jobs), that British people “will not do” ( which means ”will not do for minimum wage”) but in general we have had what the govt and central bank call “wage inflation”.
We are also talking about the north of England and non-EU immigrants strongly prefer certain areas, tilted to the South. Where I live I see few non-white faces.
That includes services, and reflects success of polices in attracting inward investment. You cannot have it both ways: capital account + current account + changes in foreign currency holdings have to balance, and the last is small comparatively.
What you say is true of cheap consumer goods, but remember everything else. Even with some consumer goods, its pretty even - the UK exports cars about as much as it imports (by value, not numbers though). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers...
Its other big goods exports are things that are not that visible to consumers.