17 October 2017
Lower-income households would be disproportionately affected should the UK revert to WTO tariffs
Exiting the EU without a trade deal and reverting to WTO ‘most-favoured nation’ (MFN) tariffs with the EU would lead to significant price rises across a range of goods, with low-income households facing the biggest cost pressures. This is according to a new joint-report published by the Resolution Foundation and the UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex. (more…)
Charlotte Humma October 17th, 2017
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Brexit, Living standards, MFN, No deal, tariffs
11 October 2017
One of the most critical issues for the Brexit negotiations in relation to trade is whether the UK should remain in the EU Single Market. The Conservatives claim that the UK will no longer be members of its single market or its customs union by the end of a two-year transitional period, but at his party’s conference, Jeremy Corbyn said a Labour government would strike a deal with the EU that “guarantees unimpeded access to the single market” after Brexit.
We have produced a short, animated video that explains what the Single Market is, how it works and the ways it effects trade, and thereby the economy. This includes the role of the European Court of Justice. Ultimately, the video explains that there is a trade-off between making your laws independently and cooperating sufficiently to be a part of a bigger market and achieve higher incomes.
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Charlotte Humma October 11th, 2017
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Brexit, European Court of Justice, Regulations, Single Market, Standards, trade
11 October 2017
Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis
Reading the Government’s White Paper on trade, and the Customs Bill on future customs arrangements, together with Monday’s statement from the Prime Minister seemed like a Groundhog day moment. In other words, this is somewhere we have been before – repeatedly. (more…)
Charlotte Humma October 11th, 2017
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Article 50, Brexit, Customs Bill, Customs Union, interim arrangements, No deal, trade, White Paper
6 October 2017
Professor Erika Szyszczak is a Research Professor in Law at the University of Sussex and a Fellow of UKTPO. She is currently the Special Adviser to the House of Lords Internal Market Sub-Committee in respect of its inquiry into Brexit: competition. She is the author of The Regulation of the State in Competitive Markets (Hart Pub. 2007)
State aid issues are highly politicised. And for good reasons. Taxpayers’ money is being used in a selective manner, without any democratic input into its effective use. Competitors, at home and abroad, feel aggrieved that a firm is either obtaining an unfair advantage or being bailed out, where it cannot compete on the market. But State aid may be necessary to combat unusual situations, such as environmental disasters, or financial crises, or to buy time to rescue and restructure in order to save jobs and a local economy. It may be needed on an ongoing basis to provide public services. (more…)
Charlotte Humma October 6th, 2017
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Article 50, Brexit, Single Market, State aid
27 September 2017
Steve McGuire is Professor of Business and Public Policy and Head of the School of Business, Management and Economics at the University of Sussex. He is a Fellow of the UKTPO.
As Bombardier is bombarded with a 220% tariff increase on exports to the US, the UK needs to wise up. There are two key points from the Boeing-Bombardier dispute that have implications for Brexit. First, leaving the European Union will not affect the sovereignty that national governments already have to dish out state aid for key industries. This will not change. Second, and this is the critical point, trade is bound up in broader political calculations. (more…)
Charlotte Humma September 27th, 2017
Posted In: UK - Non EU, UK- EU
Tags: aerospace, Boeing, Bombardier, Exports, FTA, tariffs, trade dispute
27 September 2017
Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics and Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis respectively. Both are Fellows of the UKTPO.
With respect to the post-Brexit period, the UK needs to sort out its trade relationships not just with the EU but also with non-EU countries. In regard to the EU, Mrs May’s stated objective is for an “implementation” period during which “access to one another’s markets should continue on current terms”, such that “businesses and public services should only have to plan for one set of changes in the relationship between the UK and the EU”. However, for this to be possible, the UK will also have to deal with the relationship with non-EU countries. In this blog, we focus on an important aspect of Free Trade Agreements (FTA) which centres around something which is a bit technical and often not well understood – called “Rules of Origin” (RoOs).[1] (more…)
Charlotte Humma September 27th, 2017
Posted In: UK - Non EU, UK- EU
Tags: Exports, Grandfathering, Rules of Origin, tariffs, trade, Trade agreements
26 September 2017,
L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of UKTPO. Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO, Erika Szyszczak is a Professor of Law at the University of Sussex, independent ADR Mediator and a Fellow of the UKTPO.
Now it’s official. More than a year after the UKTPO said that it would be necessary (see Briefing Paper 2 and NIER paper), the Prime Minister has announced that the UK wants a transitional deal that preserves the status quo. Namely, membership of the Single market, a customs union with the EU, free mobility of labour, jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), budget payments and no external trade deals. Sad to say, this seems like progress.
Despite the language and some of the press commentary, Britain is not ‘opting for’, still less ‘agreeing to’, a transitional deal; it is asking for one in the negotiations. The Florence speech still uses the language of an ‘implementation period’. This implies that between now and 2019 the UK can both negotiate a final settlement to be implemented after the transition and the transition itself. But the Prime Minister has made no proposals about how to construct such a deal, other than that the UK leaves the EU on 29th March 2019, so that the transition requires agreement(s) between the EU (27 remaining members) and an independent UK. (more…)
Charlotte Humma September 26th, 2017
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Article 50, Brexit, CJEU, Customs Union, FTA, Negotiations, Single Market, Transition, WTO
1st September 2017
Erika Szyszczak is a Professor of Law at the University of Sussex, independent ADR Mediator and a Fellow of the UKTPO.
This week it was reported that the PM, Theresa May intends to “cut and paste” existing EU trade deals when forging a new trade policy for the UK.
Today the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement (AA) officially came into force, although most of the provisions of the AA have been provisionally applied since 1 September 2014, with the trade provisions contained in the novel Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), provisionally applied since 1 January 2016. The AA is a new model of external relations for the EU and it addresses matters beyond trade (cooperation in foreign and security policy, justice, freedom and security (including migration) taxation, public finance management, science and technology, education and information society). It is an innovative form of external action in offering a new type of economic integration without membership of the EU: an integration-oriented agreement. The new AA may reveal some lessons for the UK as it seeks new models of trade relationships. Indeed, the AA has already entered the consciousness of the wider public as a potential model for UK-EU trade agreements post-Brexit, but, in fact, it is a most unlikely model given that the UK does not want such a deep commitment beyond trade provisions with the EU. (more…)
Charlotte Humma September 1st, 2017
Posted In: UK - Non EU, UK- EU
Tags: Association Agreement, Single Market, Trade agreements
23 August 2017
Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO
The government’s new paper “Continuity in the availability of goods for the EU and the UK – a position paper“ acknowledges the problems that will be created by a hard Brexit in which there is a disruption in the systems for verifying compliance with mandatory standards.
The problem is that its substantive proposals deal with only the most immediate disruptions in the sale of goods that are already in the supply chain at the moment of Brexit. The official description acknowledges this: “This paper outlines the UK’s position on continuity in the availability of goods in UK and EU markets at the point of EU exit” (my italics).
Yet, the key requirement for the British economy is that there needs to be a permanent system in place for ensuring that UK product inspection systems are recognised by the EU for goods made after Brexit. (more…)
Charlotte Humma August 23rd, 2017
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Exports, goods, mutual recognition of conformity, trade
21 August 2017
L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of UKTPO.
Economists for Free Trade (EfFT) are back, offering the Introduction to an unpublished – and hence unknown – report that claims £135 billion benefits from Brexit. It not only repeats the previous claim that GDP will increase by 4% if the UK adopts free trade, which I characterised as ‘doubly misleading’ in April, but it adds in an extra 2% from ‘improved regulation’, 0.6% from our net budget contribution to the EU and 0.2% from removing the ‘subsidy to unskilled immigration’. It also promises faster growth as well.
I’ll come back to free trade, but, first, what regulations will be improved? We are not told. Similarly, what subsidy to immigration? Who knows? The budget contribution to the EU may be saved, but we will need to spend much of it on providing replacements for various EU regulatory bodies such as the European Medicines Agency, on negotiating new deals on things like airlines or nuclear isotopes, supporting farmers (which EfFT apparently accepts), on customs formalities on trade with the EU, on managing alleged unfair trade and on trade disputes, etc. Until we see the details, you have to doubt these numbers. (more…)
Charlotte Humma August 21st, 2017
Posted In: UK - Non EU, UK- EU
Tags: Brexit, Customs Union, Economics, Single Market, Standards, tariffs, trade, WTO
