4 May 2022
Minako Morita-Jaeger is Policy Research Fellow at the UK Trade Policy Observatory and
Senior Research Fellow in International Trade in the Department of Economics, University of Sussex
The UK Government is aiming to secure the UK’s status as “a global hub” of digital trade, using Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) as well as digital economy agreements. Driven by the UK’s Indo-Pacific tilt strategy, the UK has been signing FTAs that include specific chapters/agreements on digital trade (such as with Australia, New Zealand, and Japan) and a digital economy agreement with Singapore. (more…)
Cosmo Rana-Iozzi May 4th, 2022
Posted In: UK - Non EU
Tags: Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, CPTPP, digital trade, Indo-Pacific, regulatory divergence
How important is the UK-US trade relationship and what are the main challenges?
Services Trade and Digital Trade
Where does the UK fit into the US-EU-China trilateral relationship?
Charlotte Humma December 21st, 2021
Posted In:
22 October 2020
Dr Minako Morita-Jaeger, International Trade Policy Consultant and Fellow, UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex.
The Japan-UK Free Trade Agreement will be signed soon, the UK’s first post-Brexit trade agreement. While the Agreement has a certain political significance, its economic impact is likely to be very small. This is because it contains very limited improvements relative to the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). While a detailed examination will only become possible once the text is put on the public domain, one of the key shortfalls in the agreement appears to be the treatment of investment. (more…)
Charlotte Humma October 22nd, 2020
Posted In: UK - Non EU
Tags: Free Trade Agreement, FTA, Japan
Core legislation does not integrate trade-related emissions into the climate target
UK Free Trade Agreements diverge in approach and ambition
Acting on areas of ‘mutual supportiveness’
Fossil fuel subsidies are non-transparent
A positive step for policy coherence: liberalisation of environmental goods
Addressing areas of potential conflict
Climate change mitigation subsidies in the global context
Current UK climate change mitigation subsidies are not ambitious or transparent enough
UK carbon pricing is still not high or consistent enough to meet the net-zero target
Enhancing mutual supportiveness:
Addressing areas of potential conflict:
George Meredith September 9th, 2020
Posted In:
Trade Bites
, the UKTPO’s new podcast series, explores all things trade policy – including Brexit, Trade Wars, and the World Trade System.
Hosted by Chris Horseman, Deputy Editor of the Trade Policy News Service – Borderlex, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the series aims to provide a cultural artefact on trade policy at a critical point not just for the UK, but for the wider world.
Available on iTunes | Soundcloud | Spotify
14 October 2022
Over the past 40 years or so, exporters have got used to the idea that the whole world is their marketplace – a notion which has been encouraged through moves by governments around the world to reduce tariffs and other barriers to trade. But with global pandemics, trade wars, fuel crises and over the past few years – could it be that the process of globalisation might be moving into reverse?
“Near-shoring” is the idea that in today’s increasingly problematic global trading environment, you might be better off buying and selling in markets which are more nearby, and hence less fraught with risk. This episode looks at whether this phenomenon actually happening, how prevalent it is and what is causing it.
Joining Chris Horseman are Dr Alessandro Borin, Bank of Italy; Professor Maria Savona, University of Sussex and LUISS in Rome; and Dr Camilla Jensen, UK Trade Policy Observatory.
24 August 2022
In this podcast we look at how the United Kingdom is getting on with its most significant trade relationship, that with its biggest trading partner the European Union. Over 18 months since the UK finally left the EU’s Single Market and went ahead with the version of Brexit favoured by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his team, questions are being asked about Britain’s post-Brexit journey. Economic data suggests that the UK’s economy is growing less rapidly than most other G20 countries, and diplomatic relations between the EU and the UK continue to be frosty amidst ongoing disagreements over the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Many do not realise that the EU-UK relationship is not set in stone. The review clause of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement means that within a couple of years, the arguments about what sort of relationship the UK wants with the EU will be right back on the table. But how well prepared is the UK to reopen those debates about alignment versus divergence, and sovereignty versus market access? Does the upcoming review create the opportunity for something better – or does it entail the threat of something worse?
To give us their considered opinions on all this, Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Peter Holmes, Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex, Georgina Wright, Senior Fellow and Director of the European Programme at the Institut Montaigne in Paris, as well as two distinguished former director generals at the European Commission, Sir Michael Leigh, now Academic Director of the European Public Policy Masters course at John Hopkins University, and Sir Jonathan Faull, current Chair of European Public Affairs at the Brunswick Group.
20 July 2022
Global supply chains have barely left the headlines in recent years. It is a fact of modern life that many of the goods we consume have multiple components manufactured in different places at different times which somehow come together to create the finished article. Yet global supply chains have started to come under pressure from a series of shocks ranging from the geopolitical to the environmental. From baby formula to cars, when consumers face shortages supply chains become part of everyday vocabulary. Besides the recent dislocations caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, there are inherent political, technical and ethical dimensions to supply chains themselves and how they function.
How could life be made easier for manufacturers of complex goods with complex supply chains? Have supply chains and globalisation become too complex? Will we ever get back to those days where we won’t hear the phrase “we can’t get the parts” as often as we do today? To answer these questions and more Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Sam Roscoe, Research Fellow at the UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex Business School, Dr Chad P. Bown, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in the US, and Dr Chul Chung, Senior Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.
13 April 2022
It has been over a year since the UK signed its single most important post-Brexit trade instrument – the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with the EU – establishing a framework for the UK relationship with the EU in a wide range of areas. In this episode, we consider the full year of data now available for EU-UK trade in goods in 2021 and assess the impact of the Agreement. Bearing in mind that Covid-19 has ensured that everything has been but business as usual, clear trends are starting to emerge and questions are starting to be asked as to exactly what’s happening and why?
Why have the 70-mile queues outside the port of Dover, which the Government postulated in 2020 as a reasonable worst case scenario, failed to materialise? Why has the UK failed so far to impose a full range of checks on goods coming into the UK and what might happen once they start to do so? And how have businesses by and large coped with the extra bureaucracy which being outside of the EU single market has entailed?
To discuss all of these issues and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Professor Michael Gasiorek, Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory, Emily Rees, Founder of Trade Strategies and Senior Fellow at the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels, Peter Foster, Public Policy Editor of The Financial Times and author of the ‘Britain after Brexit’ newsletter, and William Bain, Head of Trade Policy at the British Chambers of Commerce.
4 April 2022
The UK signed a bilateral Free Trade Agreement with Australia in December 2021. This is the first ‘new’ Free Trade Agreement (FTA) the UK has negotiated with a trade partner. This ‘world-class’ agreement marks a ‘landmark moment in the historic and vital relationship between our two Commonwealth nations’, according to the international trade secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan.
It’s certainly an ambitious Agreement, for one thing it will remove practically all tariff protection for imports of agricultural products – something which the EU would be very unlikely to have countenanced. But what does the agreement deliver in other areas, like services, government procurement, climate protection or digital trade? Furthermore, the Agreement is potentially an important benchmark for future trade negotiations, notably the ongoing application by the UK for accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), so how does it fair in terms of broader trade relations?
To make their assessments of the new agreement, Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Emily Lydgate, Deputy Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory, Dr Minako Morita-Jaeger, Senior Research Fellow in International Trade at the University of Sussex, and Policy Research Fellow at the UK Trade Policy Observatory with special guest, Professor Peter Draper, Executive Director of the Institute for International Trade at the University of Adelaide.
28 March 2022
This episode looks at the climate crisis, and specifically the trade policy response to the push towards net zero in Europe and around the world. A whole market infrastructure has been created in Europe and elsewhere with carbon emission allowances being bought and sold as a way of taxing high-emission producers and providing a financial incentive to encourage more climate-friendly production systems. However, some countries worry that heavy industry might relocate because their climate regulation makes it too expensive to operate. This could be bad for global climate action, as it will result in more greenhouse gas emissions in less regulated countries – a problem called Carbon Leakage.
The European Commission’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) aims to address Carbon Leakage by requiring (for certain products) both imported and domestic products to pay the same carbon price. How will it work? Is it compatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization? And, should the UK have its own version?
Dr Ioannis Zachariadis, Policy Officer at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Taxation and the Customs Union joins Chris Horseman and Dr Emily Lydgate, Deputy Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory, along with Dr Camilla Jensen, and Dr Peter Holmes, both Fellows of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
30 November 2021
Who are the ultimate stakeholders in UK trade policy? And how much of a say do they actually have in the policies that ultimately govern us?
Things have certainly moved on since the time, not that long ago, when European and American negotiators would disappear into a room to talk about a Transatlantic trade deal – and come out again giving virtually no information about what they’d been talking about. These days, most governments try a lot harder to be transparent about their trade objectives, and to give their stakeholders at least some input into the process.
But as the UK government settles into its own post-Brexit trade policy, has it learnt good or bad habits from its neighbours and partners? How is Britain doing in its quest to establish a trade policy which is inclusive? And when our trade diplomats negotiate deals on our behalf – are they truly reflecting our interests and our objectives?
Chris Horseman is joined by Professor L. Alan Winters, Founding Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory; Ruth Bergan, Senior Advisor at the Trade Justice Movement; and Professor Daniel Wincott, Blackwell Professor of Law and Society at the University of Cardiff.
17 November 2021
Supply chain issues crashed onto the front pages in the UK this year when petrol stations started running out of fuel. But that was just one aspect of a wider problem. A surge in demand for consumer goods has led to soaring shipping costs, with ships queueing up to get into container ports, and mounting concerns as to whether even Santa will be able to get his presents to us in time for Christmas. But we’re also facing shortages of personnel. Goods can’t get from one to place to another if there’s no-one who can drive the lorry, or if there is no-one who is qualified to sign the necessary certificates for the goods on the back of the truck. The pandemic certainly has a lot to answer for. But, as always in trade policy discussions, the extent to which Brexit is exacerbating, underlying or even causing the problems in the UK is a hot topic of debate.
To discuss all this and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Sam Roscoe and Dr Peter Holmes of the UK Trade Policy Observatory, and Harry Holmes, Features Editor at The Grocer.
16 July 2021
In this episode, we’re heading stateside as we take a closer look at the trade relationship between the UK and the United States. In one sense, it’s a relationship that only came into existence when Britain finally left the EU customs union at the end of last year. But that belies the fact that the United States is the UK’s biggest single trading partner, and London has duly inherited most of the trade policy issues which previously exercised Washington and Brussels, and for the most part still do. So how are the post-Brexit UK, and the post-Trump US, getting on trade-wise?
Chris Horseman is joined by Peter Holmes, Marianne Petsinger, and Marc Busch.
5 July 2021
As the world’s second most populous country, India is an emerging player in global trade, and of course it has deep historical and cultural ties with Britain. In recent times, India has acquired a bit of a reputation as being part of the awkward squad within the international trade community. The received wisdom was that New Delhi wasn’t interested in negotiating trade deals with other countries, or in joining regional trade agreements.
But there are signs that this may be changing. India has sounded enthusiastic about the idea of a trade deal with the UK, perhaps in response to growing fears about the impact of China’s emergence as a trade superpower in the Asian region, or perhaps because it senses opportunities to benefit from Britain’s new status outside of the EU.
So what are the prospects for UK-India trade? What’s India’s game plan, and how likely is it that it will achieve its objectives?
Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Mattia Di Ubaldo, Dr Amrita Saha, and Professor Abhijit Das.
25 June 2021
Part of the United Kingdom, but effectively within the EU single market, but still part of the UK’s customs territory – you’d be forgiven for feeling a little confused about just how Northern Ireland fits into things these days.
The problem is that if Northern Ireland remains part of the EU single market, then the EU wants to make sure that anything that enters that single market is compliant with its own rules – even if that stuff comes from Great Britain, which is part of the same country as Northern Ireland. All of which creates a very interesting problem – unless of course you are one of the thousands of businesses involved in trying to move goods to and from Northern Ireland, in which case “interesting” is probably not the adjective you’d choose to use. So what are the next steps in the evolving saga? How did we get into this situation, and, more relevantly, how do we find solutions to the current problems?
Chris Horseman is joined by Michael Gasiorek, Katy Hayward and Aodhan Connolly.
21 June 2021
Traditional types of trade are regulated by the World Trade Organisation, under rules which mostly date from 1995 – a time when data exchanges were accompanied by the screech of a modem, and were measured in kilobytes. So it’s perhaps not surprising that there are no meaningful global rules in place at the moment to regulate digital trade. But increasingly, as regional trade deals become more common, frameworks are starting to emerge to provide more legal and commercial certainty for those businesses which trade in cyberspace. But what happens when different jurisdictions have rules which aren’t compatible with each other? And how can we be sure that digital trade is regulated in a way which is fair for all?
To discuss all this and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Ingo Borchert, Eunice Huang, and Johannes Fritz. This podcast is co-organised in collaboration with the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Trade and Investment.
30 March 2021
Up until the end of last year, the UK was part of the EU single market, and British traders had enjoyed frictionless trade with Europe for several decades. But all of that has now changed. Customs formalities are a fact of life, with paperwork to be filled in whether you’re sending a lorry load of precision tools to a factory in Germany, or a few jars of Marmite to your auntie on the Costa Del Sol. Add to that the complexities of rules of origin for manufactured and processed goods, and the particularly onerous rules which now apply on EU imports of agri-food products, and life is suddenly looking a lot tougher for UK exporters. But to what extent do these issues represent teething problems which can be overcome in due course? What could or should the government be doing to make life easier for exporting businesses? And how are British firms coping with the new challenges that they face?
Chris Horseman is joined by Michael Gasiorek, Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory; Anna Jerzewska, Director of the Trade and Borders Consultancy, and Associate Fellow of the UKTPO; and Ian Henry, Owner and Managing Director of AutoAnalysis and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Brexit Studies.
19 March 2021
Disagreements over fisheries nearly sunk last year’s trade negotiations between the UK and the EU. A deal was eventually signed, which repatriated some – but not all – of the fish resources in UK waters back to UK control. However, despite leaving the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy behind, the deal left many in the fishing community somewhat underwhelmed. But what exactly has been agreed? Was it ever realistic to expect a better deal? And were we so preoccupied with establishing our rights to catch fish, that we forgot about the question of how we were going to sell them once they were landed?
To tackle all these questions and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Professor Michael Gasiorek, Director of the UKTPO; Barrie Deas, Chief Executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations; and Suzannah Walmsley, Principal Consultant and Fisheries and Aquaculture Business Development Manager at ABPmer.
04 March 2021
In the 21st century, international trade has almost universal scope, and the UK, like other developed countries, trades with pretty much every other country on earth, including those with some pretty repressive regimes in charge. So how can we shape international trade in a way which encourages our trading partners to uphold certain basic standards, and sanctions them effectively if they don’t? And to what extent is it realistic to expect that trade policy could be used as a tool for improving human rights standards in other countries?
In this episode, Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Mattia Di Ubaldo, Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory; Dr Samantha Velluti, Reader at the Sussex Law School, and an expert on EU law and policy; and Dr Jennifer Zerk, Associate Fellow of the International Law Programme at Chatham House.
25 February 2021
The government has promised to create at least 10 freeports up and down the country, as a key strand of its new post-Brexit trade and industrial policy. There has been a bidding process for sea ports and airports to convert to freeport status, with the deadline for bids expiring on February 5th. But what actually is a freeport? What can you do in them that you can’t do in a non-free port? Enthusiasts for the scheme see freeports as a way of stimulating trade by minimising taxes and red tape, and creating employment in deprived coastal areas. Detractors, on the other hand, are less enthusiastic, citing problems which other freeports around the world have faced with smuggling and other nefarious activities. So are freeports a creative answer to the economic challenges of 21st century Britain, or more of a step back into Jack Sparrow territory?
Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Peter Holmes, Fellow of the UKTPO; Edward Farmer, Managing Director of the UK Free Trade Zone Association; and Paul Swinney, Director of Policy and Research at the Centre for Cities
19 January 2021
The UK’s Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU came into force on New Year’s Day. Since then, the focus has mainly been on the border issues, with supermarket supplies running short in a few areas, and lorry drivers’ ham sandwiches being confiscated by Dutch customs officials. But while the UK’s Michael Gove always said there would be ‘bumps in the road’ to begin with, where will the TCA deal ultimately lead us? What sort of an agreement is it, and could it yet be improved upon? And what will it mean for UK businesses which have dealings with the EU?
To discuss all this and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Professor L. Alan Winters, Jill Rutter and Iana Dreyer.
08 December 2020
This episode examines the question of food standards and how they will affect Britain’s post-Brexit international trade. As the UK leaves the EU, will we be diverging from the European food standards that have applied in Britain for the last few decades? What would be the benefit of diverging? What might be the risks of not diverging? And do the Americans really want to poison us as a core objective of their current free trade agreement negotiations – as you might be led to believe from some recent media headlines?
Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Emily Lydgate, David Henig and Professor Fiona Smith.
01 December 2020
Since the Brexit referendum, the trade policy focus has been primarily about how UK businesses will trade with their counterparts in the EU and around the world. But what about intra-UK trade? Surely it stands to reason that there won’t be any problem for a business in England to trade with a business in Scotland? However, closer examination shows that when you strip away the legal framework provided by EU membership, and simultaneously devolve regulatory powers to the administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, some rather unexpected problems can result. The UK Internal Market Bill, currently making its way through Parliament, forms part of the Government’s response to these challenges. But will it solve the problems, or simply exacerbate them?
To discuss all this and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Emily Lydgate, George Peretz QC and Professor Graeme Roy.
26 August 2020
The UK imports around twenty-five billion pounds’ worth of pharmaceutical products each year from a wide range of supplier countries. Even during the worst phases of this year’s COVID-19 crisis, we have not run short of essential drugs. But how confident can we be that such a disaster would never happen? Are too many of our pharmaceutical eggs in one basket? What role is there for public policy and trade policy in ensuring that our pharma supply strategy is the right one? And how might Brexit complicate things?
Chris Horseman is joined by UKTPO fellow Dr Sam Roscoe and Dr Richard Torbett, chief executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
08 June 2020
Britain left the EU on 31 January 2020. But for the time being, hardly anything has changed in terms of the country’s trade with Europe. We’re in a transition period which will run until the end of the year, and during that period the UK needs to negotiate a whole new trading relationship with the EU. But is that period going to be long enough to get everything sorted out? There is an option to extend the transition period, but what difference would that actually make? And how might the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the negotiations?
To explore these questions, Chris Horseman is joined by Peter Holmes and Sam Lowe.
29 May 2020
COVID-19 has had a profound effect on trade. A global recession is always going to have an impact on trade volumes, but this pandemic has had the effect of completely choking off demand for some goods and services, while pushing demand for others through the roof. And that has posed acute trade policy challenges. Is it ever right to impose controls on exports of sensitive products? Were we naive to put so much faith in global markets and the ability to source the goods and services we need from around the world? And when the pandemic finally starts to ease, what sort of a global trading system will we be left with?
To discuss all this and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Michael Gasiorek, Allie Renison, and Simon Evenett.
2 April 2020
Trade in services is generally reckoned to account for about 80% of the UK economy. The UK financial services sector alone makes a contribution to the economy that is worth the equivalent of the entire GDP or Bulgaria and Croatia combined. So why do we hear so little about services in the context of the trade negotiations that are just getting underway with the EU and the US? Is the UK missing a trick?
In the final episode of this series, Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Ingo Borchert, Julia Magntorn Garrett, and Sebastian Benz.
26 March 2020
For many people, the idea that the National Health Service may be ‘up for sale’ in the UK’s upcoming international trade negotiations is a cause of great anxiety. But what does that phrase even mean? The NHS offers a massive range of services, from brain surgery to cleaning the hospital windows. So if any of these services are subcontracted, who is allowed to bid for them? To what extent do health care services form part of the discussions in international trade negotiations, such as the one the UK has recently commenced with the US? And are there international rules about what can, or should, or may not be on the table?
To get to grips with these important questions, Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Ingo Borchert and Laura Bannister, Senior Adviser at the Trade Justice Movement.
19 March 2020
For the past few years, the United States and China have been at each other’s throats, with the Trump administration slapping a series of punitive tariffs on Chinese imports and Beijing responding with its own retaliatory measures. The US accuses China of not playing fair when it comes to global trade. So what is it that China has done to incur the wrath of the White House? What lies behind the tensions between Washington and Beijing? And why should Europe care about what is going on? Are there opportunities that UK businesses could exploit, or will UK exporters just get caught in the crossfire?
To explore the specifics of these trade tensions, Chris Horseman is joined by Jim Rollo and Steven McGuire.
17 March 2020
Back in early February, the Department for International Trade announced that it was seeking the views of stakeholders on what sort of tariffs the UK should apply on its imports of goods. As an EU member, the UK applied the same tariffs as the rest of the EU, but as from next year it can do what it likes tariff-wise. So is this a chance for ‘Global Britain’ to tear away the protectionist trappings of the EU and embrace the free market at last? Or might Britain’s manufacturing and agricultural industries want to retain some tariff protection against cheaper imports from overseas? And how do UK import tariffs actually affect businesses, consumers and the UK economy?
To offer their views on all this and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Julia Magntorn Garrett, Rodney Ludema, Allie Renison, and Sue Davies.
12 March 2020
After almost half a century as an EU member state, the UK is about to become an autonomous member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). For some, this represents an exciting opportunity. But what is the value of WTO membership? And given the multiple challenges that the rules-based trading system is facing at present, can Britain be a force for good in securing a more reliable trading environment?
To explore all this and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Minako Morita-Jaeger, Patrick Low and Amar Breckenridge.
5 March 2020
The question of the Irish border has always been one of the most contentious issues in the Brexit negotiations between the UK and the EU. Boris Johnson has claimed that his Brexit deal is the best of all worlds, maintaining frictionless trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. But is this case? What does the settlement reached in the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement actually mean for trade between Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic and the rest of the EU?
Chris Horseman is joined by Professor L. Alan Winters, Professor Michael Gasiorek, and BBC Northern Ireland’s Business and Economics Editor, John Campbell.
27 February 2020
Now that the UK has left the European Union, the Government has promised to complete a whole string of Free Trade Agreements with the EU, the United States, and various other trading partners around the world. But is there a catch to doing these negotiations? Are there trade-offs involved – and what are they likely to be? And how easy will it be to work towards a closer trade relationship with the rest of the world, while still in the process of disengaging from the EU?
Chris Horseman is joined by Dr Emily Lydgate, Dr Anna Jerzewska, Maddy Thimont Jack, and Dr Holger Hestermeyer to unravel these complex questions.
20 February 2020
Boris Johnson promised to ‘get Brexit done’ when he won the UK General Election in December 2019 – and on one level he achieved that aim on 31 January. However, there is still much to be decided as the UK begins the process of disengaging from the EU. Can a Free Trade Agreement between the two sides be achieved by the transition deadline of 31 December? What happens if a deal can’t be struck? Does the Brexit cliff-edge loom once more?
Chris Horseman is joined by Peter Holmes, Anand Menon and Fabian Zuleeg to explore what is still on the Brexit agenda in the months and years ahead.
13 February 2020
As the UK enters the post-Brexit transition period, Boris Johnson has made clear that a trade deal with the US is as big a priority, if not more so, than a deal with the EU. But are Britain and America natural trade partners? What benefits could a transatlantic trade deal deliver? And what about chlorinated chicken?
To discuss all this and more, Chris Horseman is joined by Professor Michael Gasiorek, Sir Jonathan Faull, Iana Dreyer, and Alan Beattie.
This podcast is brought to you by the UK Trade Policy Observatory, in association with Borderlex.
nickphipps November 29th, 2019
Posted In:
Download Briefing Paper 24
Understanding what services trade liberalisation under FTAs can offer
Why are FTA services negotiations so difficult?
Legal and economic factors affecting FTA services negotiations
The UK’s future FTA services negotiations with non-EU countries
It is unrealistic for the UK to expect better deals than those of the EU
Charlotte Humma November 15th, 2018
Posted In:
Business and Trade Committee: The performance of investment zones and freeports in England
Oral evidence – Peter Holmes (24 October 2023)
European Affairs Committee: The Ukraine Effect: The impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the UK–EU relationship
Written evidence – Erika Szyszczak (2 October 2023)
International Trade Committee: The future of the global rules-based trading system
Oral evidence – Peter Holmes (1 February 2023)
International Trade Committee: UK trade negotiations (CPTPP accession)
Written evidence – Minako Morita-Jaeger (19 October 2022)
Public Bill Committee: Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill
Oral evidence – Michael Gasiorek (14 October 2022)
International Agreements Committee: UK-India free trade agreement
Written evidence – Mattia di Ubaldo, Ingo Borchert and Amrita Saha (15 July 2022)
European Scrutiny Committee: Inquiry on retaining EU law
Written evidence – Chloe Anthony and Emily Lydgate (28 April 2022)
International Agreements Committee: UK-Australia trade negotiations
Written evidence – Minako Morita-Jaeger (1 April 2022)
International Agreements Committee: UK-New Zealand trade negotiations
Oral evidence – Michael Gasiorek (17 March 2022)
International Trade Committee: Trade and Foreign Policy
Written evidence – L. Alan Winters (2 March 2022)
International Trade Committee: UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement
Oral Evidence – Minako Morita-Jaeger (9 February 2022)
International Trade Committee Inquiry for the UK-Australia FTA
Written evidence from the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) (January 2022)
International Agreements Committee: UK-Australia and UK-NZ trade negotiations
Oral Evidence – Emily Lydgate (8 December 2021)
Environmental Audit Committee: Carbon border adjustment mechanism
Written Evidence – Michael Gasiorek and Camilla Jensen (25 November 2021)
House of Lords International Agreement Committee: UK-New Zealand Trade Negotiations
Oral Evidence – Michael Gasiorek (24 November 2021)
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee: The Scrutiny of International Treaties and other international agreements in the 21st century
Written Evidence – L. Alan Winters, Minako Morita-Jaeger and Chloe Anthony (26 October 2021)
International Trade Committee: COP26 and international trade
Oral Evidence – Emily Lydgate (21 September 2021)
Department for International Trade: Designing the UK trade preferences scheme for developing nations consultation
UKTPO response – Mattia Di Ubaldo and L. Alan Winters (10 September 2021)
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee: Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol
Written Evidence – UK Trade Policy Observatory (15 July 2021)
International Trade Committee: UK-EU trading relationship
Oral Evidence – Emily Lydgate (22 April 2021)
International Trade Committee: Digital trade and data
Written Evidence – Ingo Borchert and Minako Morita-Jaeger (24 February 2021)
International Trade Committee: UK trade negotiations: UK Accession to CPTPP
Oral Evidence – Minako Morita-Jaeger (3 February 2021)
House of Lords EU International Agreements Sub-Committee: UK-Canada Trade Continuity Agreement
Written Evidence – UKTPO (27 January 2021)
House of Lords EU International Agreements Sub-Committee: Environment and climate in international trade
Oral Evidence – Emily Lydgate (20 January 2021)
Public Accounts Committee: COVID-19: Government procurement and supply of personal protective equipment
Written Evidence – Ian Clarke and Professor Erika Szyszczak (10 December 2020)
International Trade Committee: The UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) inquiry
Written Evidence – Minako Morita-Jaeger (18 November 2020)
Oral Evidence – Minako Morita-Jaeger (11 November 2020)
EU International Agreements Sub-Committee: UK-Japan trade negotiations
Written Evidence – Minako Morita Jaeger (19 November 2020)
Oral Evidence – Minako Morita-Jaeger (23 September 2020)
International Trade Committee: The COVID-19 pandemic and international trade
Written Evidence – UKTPO (27 July 2020)
Written Evidence – Erika Szyszczak and Ian Clarke (7 May 2020)
Oral Evidence – Samuel Roscoe (23 April 2020)
House of Lords EU Goods Sub-Committee: Beyond tariffs: facilitating future UK-EU trade in manufactured goods inquiry
Written Evidence – Peter Holmes and Andrew Hood (22 July 2020)
Written Evidence – Michael Gasiorek, Julia Magntorn Garrett, and Anna Jerzewska (23 July 2020)
House of Lords Committee on the Future Relationship with the EU: Progress of the negotiations on the UK’s Future Relationship with the EU
Written Evidence – Minako Morita-Jaeger (14 July 2020)
House of Lords EU Environment Sub-Committee: Environment and the Level Playing Field
Written Evidence – Emily Lydgate (8 July 2020)
House of Lords EU Services Sub-Committee: The future UK-EU relationship on professional and business services
Written Evidence – Julia Magntorn Garrett (2 July 2020)
Written Evidence – UKTPO, City-REDI, The Managing Partners’ Forum (2 July 2020)
Department for International Trade Freeports Consultation
Written Response – Professor L. Alan Winters and Dr Peter Holmes (30 June 2020)
International Trade Committee: UK trade negotiations: trade strategy and scrutiny
Oral Evidence – Peter Holmes (17 June 2020)
Public Bill Committee: Trade Bill (Second sitting)
Oral Evidence – L. Alan Winters (16 June 2020)
EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, and EU Environment Sub-Committee: Environment and the Level Playing Field
Oral Evidence – Emily Lydgate (June 2020)
Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union: Progress of the negotiations on the UK’s Future Relationship with the EU
Written Evidence – Emily Lydgate (10 June 2020)
International Trade Committee: UK Freeports inquiry
Written Evidence – Peter Holmes (5 June 2020)
Welsh Affairs Committee: Inquiry into Freeports
Written Evidence – Professor L. Alan Winters (4 April 2020)
Department for International Trade open consultation on the UK Global Tariff
Written Response – Professor Michael Gasiorek, Julia Magntorn Garrett, Nicolo Tamberi and Professor L. Alan Winters (5 March 2020)
Scottish Parliament: Scotland and the UK Internal Market
Written Evidence – Emily Lydgate and Chloe Anthony (February 2020)
Good Law Project: Proceedings in Scotland to establish that the proposed Withdrawal Agreement is unlawful
Written Evidence – Professor L. Alan Winters (14 November 2019)
International Trade Committee: UK trade with China inquiry
Written Evidence – Dr Peter Holmes, Mrs Julia Magntorn Garrett and Professor Jim Rollo (16 October 2019)
EU Internal Market Sub-Committee: Discontinuing seasonal changes of time inquiry
Written Evidence – Dr Mattia Di Ubaldo (12 September 2019)
International Trade Committee: UK trade in services inquiry
Oral Evidence – Dr Kamala Dawar (26 June 2019)
Exiting the European Union Committee: The progress of the UK’s negotiations on EU withdrawal inquiry
Oral Evidence – Dr Emily Lydgate (15 May 2019)
International Trade Committee: UK trade in services inquiry
Written Evidence -Ingo Borchert, Peter Holmes, Prof. Jim Rollo and Prof. L. Alan Winters (13 February 2019)
Welsh Affairs Committee. Brexit, trade and customs: implications for Wales inquiry
Oral Evidence – L. Alan Winters (5 February 2019)
International Trade Committee: UK investment policy inquiry
Oral Evidence – Ilona Serwicka (23 January 2019)
Response to the Department for International Trade Consultation on UK Trade with the United States (25 October 2018)
International Trade Committee: The Impact of UK-EU Arrangements on Wider UK Trade Policy
Oral Evidence – Dr Emily Lydgate, Dr Michael Gasiorek, Dr Peter Holmes (12 September 2018)
House of Lords EU External Affairs Sub-committee. Brexit: customs arrangements inquiry
Written Evidence – Dr Peter Holmes (24 May 2018)
EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee. Brexit: plant and animal biosecurity inquiry
Oral Evidence – Dr Emily Lydgate (25 April 2018)
Written Evidence – Dr Emily Lydgate and Dr Rob Amos (9 May 2018)
International Trade Committee. The economic effects of trade policy inquiry
Oral Evidence – Prof Alasdair Smith (24 April 2018)
Written Evidence – Prof Alasdair Smith (23 May 2018)
EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee. Brexit: food security inquiry
Written evidence – Dr Ilona Serwicka (14 March 2018)
Trade Bill 2017 – 19
Written evidence – Prof L. Alan Winters (25th January 2018)
Written evidence – Dr Kamala Dawar (24th January 2018)
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. Leaving the EU: Implications for UK Business
Oral evidence – Emily Lydgate (Published 31 January 2018)
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. Inquiry into Brexit and the implications for UK business
Response to Aerospace inquiry – UKTPO (BRS0005, 15 November 2017)
Response to Automotive inquiry – UKTPO (BRA0015, 7 November 2017)
Response to UK Government’s Trade White Paper and Customs Bill (6 November 2017)
House of Lords EU Select Committee. Inquiry into Brexit: deal or no deal
Written evidence – UKTPO (DND0033, 02 November 2017)
Exiting the European Union Committee. The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill inquiry
Oral evidence – Dr Kamala Dawar (17 October 2017)
Trade Sub-Committee of the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. Inquiry into ‘Australia’s trade and investment relationship with the United Kingdom’
Written evidence – UKTPO (no. 48, March 2017)
House of Commons Exiting the European Union Committee. Inquiry on the UK’s negotiating objectives for its withdrawal from the EU
Oral evidence – Prof Jim Rollo (21 February 2017) and Written evidence – UKTPO (21 February 2017)
Treasury Committee. Inquiry into UK’s future economic relationship with the EU inquiry
Written evidence – UKTPO (22 February 2017)
Written evidence – UKTPO (17 December 2017)
House of Commons International Trade Committee. Inquiry into the UK’s trade options beyond 2019
Oral evidence – Prof L. Alan Winters (10 Jan 2017) and Written evidence – UKTPO (17 January 2017)
House of Lords EU External Affairs Sub-Committee. Inquiry into Brexit: future trade between the UK and the EU
Oral Evidence – Dr Peter Holmes (15 Sept 2016) and Written Evidence – Dr Peter Holmes (published 25 Oct 2016)
Charlotte Humma October 3rd, 2017
Posted In:
Friday 2nd December 2022
Chatham House, St James’s Square, London
In-person only event.
We have seen significant economic and political shifts in recent years with the Covid-19 pandemic, the escalating climate crisis, the disruptions caused by Brexit in Europe as well as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war continuing to change the global economic and political order. These shifts provide an impetus and opportunity to open new and old debates about the role of international trade. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to bring together economists, lawyers, political scientists, international relations scholars, and policy experts to consider some of the core emerging issues, as well as the latest evidence and thinking on the consequences for sustainable international trade, and trade policy.
PROGRAMME
10.00-11.00 – Session 1: Post-Brexit trade – Chair: Camilla Jensen (UK Trade Policy Observatory, University of Sussex and Roskilde University)
11.00 – 11.30 – Coffee Break
11.30-12.30 – Session 2: Climate and Trade – Chair: Alasdair Smith (UK Trade Policy Observatory/University of Sussex)
12.30 – 13.30 – Lunch
13.30-15.00 – Session 3: Digital Trade – Chair: Ingo Borchert (UK Trade Policy Observatory/University of Sussex)
15.00 – 15.30 – Coffee Break
15.30-16.30 – Session 4: Sustainable Trade – Chair: Amrita Saha (Institute of Development Studies)
16.30-17.15 ROUNDTABLE: What role for FTAs in trade policy? – Chair: Michael Gasiorek (UK Trade Policy Observatory/University of Sussex). Panel: Emily Lydgate (UK Trade Policy Observatory), David Henig (European Centre for International Political Economy), Ian Shepherd (Department for International Trade, UK Government)
View our full conference programme here.
Tuesday 28th June 2022, 12:30-13:30 GMT
In-person only event
Chatham House, St James’s Square, London
The scope and fragility of supply chains in international trade have come under scrutiny. The COVID-19 pandemic and disruptions from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have raised concerns over the resilience of supply chains, whereas environmental problems highlight the need for sustainable supply chains.
Geopolitical shocks, the digitization of processes in supply chain management, and an increasing public concern about the distributional impact of trade and globalization add further complexity to the discussion of what supply chains could or should look like. Policymakers feel the need to design regulatory responses to these challenges, yet there is a danger that governments may take an inappropriate ‘pick ‘n’ mix’ approach to policies. In particular, the pretext of supply chain resilience could be used as a get-out clause for a wide range of industrial policy interventions.
This event draws on insights from a Briefing Paper and will discuss ways to achieve more international cooperation and coordination, so as to address supply chain vulnerabilities and avoid disguised protectionism. Held under the Chatham House Rule, this event will be in-person only and will not be recorded to encourage as free and open an exchange of ideas as possible.
University of Sussex will use your registration data in accordance with its privacy policy which can be found here: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/website/privacy-and-cookies/privacy . University of Sussex will share your name, job title, organization name and email address with Chatham House, who will use your details in line with its privacy policy which can be found here: https://www.chathamhouse.org/privacy-and-cookie-policies.
Presenters:
Camilla Jensen, Senior Research Fellow, UKTPO
Chair:
Ingo Borchert, Deputy Director, UKTPO
Discussant:
Marianne Schneider-Petsinger, Senior Research Fellow, Chatham House
Zoom Webinar
Thursday 18 November 2021 | 10:00 – 11:00 GMT
This webinar will consider how the implementation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between the UK and EU has impacted on UK businesses. William Bain will discuss feedback from BCC members as to how they have been affected; Anna Jerzewska will share her insights from offering detailed advice to companies dealing with the new trading arrangements, and Michael Gasiorek will present analysis based on the most up-to-date data of the impact on UK exports and imports since January 2021. Understanding the impacts of the TCA is important in its own right, but also in the face of the ongoing dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol and the potential suspension of some or all of the TCA should the dispute escalate.
Presenters:
Michael Gasiorek, Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory, University of Sussex
William Bain, Head of Trade Policy, British Chambers of Commerce
Anna Jerzewska, Director of Trade and Borders Consultancy and an Associate Fellow of the UKTPO
Chair:
Mattia Di Ubaldo, Research Fellow in the Economics of the European Trade Policy, University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO
Zoom Webinar
Tuesday 2 November 2021 | 13:00 – 17:30 GMT
and
Wednesday 3 November 2021 | 13:00-17:30 GMT
View the full programme here
Our conference this year is explicitly intended to be interdisciplinary with an exciting mix of papers from the fields of economics, law and international business with a range of excellent speakers and discussants. See below for the provisional programme.
Day 1, Tuesday 2 November 2021
| Time | Session | Presenter | Discussant |
| 13.00 – 13.15 | Welcome and Introduction: | Michael Gasiorek Director, UKTPO |
– |
| 13.15 – 13.55 |
Consolidation or fragmentation of executive power? Brexit, food law and the UK’s search for a post-EU identity
|
Emily Lydgate & Chloe Anthony (Sussex) | Viviane Gravey (QUB) |
| 14.00 – 14.40 | UK financial agricultural support after EU exit – what powers for the devolved administrations? | Ludivine Petetin (Cardiff) | tbc |
| Break | |||
| 14.50 -15.30 | Globalisation and Market Power | Giammario Impulitti & Fahad Kazmi (Nottingham) | Dennis Novy (Warwick) |
| 15.35 – 16.15 | Impact of the EU-UK TCA on UK trade & UK regions | Michael Gasiorek & Nicolo Tamberi (Sussex) | Thomas Sampson (LSE) |
| Break | |||
| 16.25 – 17.05 | Deep services agreements and their effect on trade and VA | Ingo Borchert & Mattia di Ubaldo (Sussex) | Lucian Cernat (EU Commission) |
| 17.10 – 17.20 | Concluding remarks | Emily Lydgate, Deputy Director, UKTPO | – |
Day 2, Wednesday 3 November 2021
| 13.00 – 13.05 | Welcome and introduction | Ingo Borchert, Deputy Director, UKTPO | |
| 13.05 – 13.45 | Non-trade issues in PTAs and FDI | Mattia di Ubaldo & Michael Gasiorek (Sussex) | Max Mendez Parra (ODI) |
| 13.50 – 14.30 | FDI, Value Chains and Local Economic Development in Africa | Bernard Hoekman & Marco Sanfilippo (EUI) | Cosimo Beverelli (WTO) |
| Break | |||
| 14.45 – 15.25 | Identifying emergent supply chain logics during disruptive geopolitical events: A study of Brexit, the US-China trade war and COVID-19 | Sam Roscoe (Sussex) | Sam Lowe (CER) |
| 15.30 – 16.10 | Ensuring more inclusive trade – the case of labour standards in the global garment supply chain in times of Covid-19 | Samantha Velluti (Sussex) | James Harrison (Warwick) |
| Break | |||
| 16.20 – 17.20 | Roundtable: What does an inclusive trade policy mean and how to achieve it? | Chair: | Michael Gasiorek (Sussex) |
| Panel: | L. Alan Winters (Sussex) Dan Wincott (Cardiff) Richard Price (Dep’t for International Trade) Ruth Bergan (Trade Justice Movement) |
||
| 17:20-17:30 | Closing Remarks | Michael Gasiorek, Director, UKTPO | – |
See the full programme here
We very much hope you will be able to join us.
For those of you who cannot attend and are interested in any of the sessions, we will be recording the webinars and will send out links to those on our mailing list. The panel discussion will not be recorded and will be held under Chatham House rule.
Zoom webinar
Wednesday 20 October
9:30 – 10:30 BST
Speakers:
Sam Lowe, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Reform
George Riddell, Director of Trade Strategy, EY, London
Discussant:
Emily Lydgate, Reader in Law, Deputy Director, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Chair
Creon Butler, Director, Global Economy and Finance Programme, Chatham House
In this webinar, Sam Lowe and George Riddell identify the trade tools the UK government could use to support its green ambitions in its independent trade policy.
The report focuses of four key areas:
The authors set out a toolbox of the trade and regulatory policy areas that the UK should be engaging with and utilising in the development of its green trade strategy. However, they also argue that the UK cannot achieve its stated aim to be a global leader on green trade without cooperation of the entire UK Government as well as trading partners, international organisations, businesses, consumer groups and civil society.
Zoom Webinar
Thursday 16 September 2021
12:30 – 13:30 BST
Speakers:
Discussant:
David Henig, Director, the UK Trade Policy Project, European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
Chair:
Michael Gasiorek, Professor of Economics, Director, UKTPO, University of Sussex
The UK’s free trade agreements are currently being pitched as win-win, but trade-offs are involved. Regulatory principles in any free trade agreement can constrain domestic policy and impact on domestic outcomes, which may impact on what can subsequently be agreed to with other partners in future FTAs.
In this event we discuss the UK’s strategic choice to accede to CPTPP as part of a larger symbolic move away from the EU and its regulatory model. We examine the implications for domestic regulatory strategy and the UK’s future FTA negotiations, with regards to food standards, and data privacy. There are clear consequences for domestic outcomes and how they align with domestic objectives, which, in turn requires greater clarity and transparency about domestic objectives from the UK government.
This event will be a discussion of two recently published UKTPO Briefing Papers:
Zoom Webinar
Wednesday 23 June 2021
16:00 – 17:00 BST
Speaker:
Discussant:
Moderator:
Every time we go online, we are taking a leap of faith as we trust that the firms that provide us with goods and services will also protect our personal data. However, as the proliferation of cybercrime and hacks demonstrates, the internet was not designed to sustain trust.
Policymakers have long been trying to negotiate a common and suitable approach to govern cross-border data flows. Yet the ensuing e-commerce/digital trade agreements generally share several elements that make it difficult to effectively enforce public policy goals across different jurisdictions, raise compliance costs for business, and are unlikely to build user trust.
Prof Susan Aaronson will argue that trade policymakers must pay closer attention to users’ concerns if they truly want to achieve “data free flow with trust.” She will specifically discuss the cases of internet shutdowns and the spread of disinformation, and will make several suggestions for improving international data governance. Nicolás Schubert will offer comments from his distinguished career as a trade negotiator and lawyer. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions.
Zoom Webinar
Monday 7 June 2021
12:30 – 13:30 BST
With record carbon prices causing EU industry outcry, the EU Parliament has recently voted to extend EU pricing to imported products through a so-called Border Carbon Adjustment (BCA). The UK, Canada and US are also understood to be among other countries considering some form of BCAs or related border measures.
In the lead-up to the G7, where Boris Johnson has suggested BCAs may feature on the agenda, this webinar will focus on what is driving the interest in BCAs and significant outstanding questions about how BCAs could be designed and applied. It will also explore questions around the potential consequences of BCAs, for climate and for trade goals, and for international cooperation on both fronts.
With respect to design, BCA presents a policy trilemma between the goals of environmental ambition, technical feasibility and fairness. This trilemma means that there is likely to be no perfect solution for BCA design, but rather trade-offs between goals.
The upcoming G7 and COP, both hosted by the UK, could provide an opportunity to make progress on important questions about international cooperation on BCAs. But there are also significant risks if the topic is mishandled. These questions include: what implications BCAs will have for trading partners, including developing countries? What kinds of transition mechanisms, exemptions or complementary cooperation are needed? How much are BCAs likely to lever or incentivize climate action and in which sectors and economies? And, how could the focus on BCAs influence international trade cooperation more broadly, including on environmental topics and at the WTO?
Chair:
Creon Butler, Research Director, Trade, Investment and New Governance Models; Director, Global Economy and Finance Programme, Chatham House
Presentation:
Emily Lydgate, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Law at the University of Sussex; Deputy Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory
Discussants:
Carolyn Deere Birkbeck, Associate Fellow, Chatham House; Director, Forum on Trade, Environment & the SDGs, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Michael Gasiorek, Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex; Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory
To be followed by Q&A with the audience.
Zoom Webinar
Tuesday 19 January 2021
12:30 – 13:30 GMT
Chair:
James Martin, Director of Policy, British Chambers of Commerce.
Speakers:
Professor Michael Gasiorek, Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory
Dr Anna Jerzewska, Director, Trade and Borders Consultancy
Paul Wrighting, Trade Training Manager, British Chambers of Commerce.
Zoom Webinar
Thursday 7 January 2021
14:00 – 15:30 GMT
On the 30 December 2020 at the end of the EU Transition Period, the UK and EU signed a crucial Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
This interactive and engaging webinar will explore what has been agreed, to what extent have the UK’s negotiating objectives been realised, and will discuss the implications for the economy, for businesses and for people going forward.
The event is being held as a joint webinar with the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) and will be chaired by Prof. Michael Gasiorek, Director of the UKTPO. He will be joined by:
Zoom Webinar
Wednesday 16 December 2020
9:30am – 10:30am GMT
Our latest Briefing Paper, “The UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement: Lessons for the UK’s future trade agreements,” provides an analysis of this new agreement in relation to the Japan-EU EPA and draws two major lessons for the UK’s future free trade agreements. First, the authors find that it mostly replicates the Japan-EU EPA, with the UK failing to break new ground after independence from the EU trade regime. Second, in terms of institutions, substantive and inclusive policy discussions with a range of stakeholders need to take place to enable public scrutiny and discussion of the implications of potential positions, before negotiating with trade partners.
Speakers:
Minako Morita Jaeger, Fellow, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Yohannes Ayele, Research Fellow, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Discussant:
Mr Hiroshi Matsuura, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Japanese Embassy in the UK
Chair:
Michael Gasiorek, Director, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Zoom Webinar
Thursday 19 November 2020
Time: 14:30 – 15:30 GMT
To contain the COVID-19 pandemic and protect susceptible populations, most countries imposed stringent lockdown measures in the first half of 2020. Meanwhile, economic activity contracted dramatically on a global scale. In this webinar, Francesco Grigoli will present research from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that dissects the nature of the economic crisis in the first seven months of the pandemic. He will examine the economic impacts of lockdowns and voluntary social distancing, and consider the uneven effects of lockdown measures, which are found to have a larger impact on the mobility of women and younger cohorts. The webinar will conclude with a discussion and Q&A.
Interactive Quiz on Zoom
Tuesday 10 November 2020
Time 17:00 – 18:00 GMT
Our interactive fun quiz, hosted by a Professor and student of economics at the University of Sussex will help you to find out how trade and trade policy affect your future prospects, the wider economy, environment and international relations.
You will also get a chance to win either a £100 voucher or one of two £50 vouchers just for turning up and joining in!
This quiz is for young people (you can also be young at heart!) with an interest in what is going on in the world at the moment. It will focus on some of the challenges we are now facing, such as: on-going technological change, the UK leaving the EU, Covid-19, and the green agenda to name a few.
Join in, find out more and get a chance to win!
Winners will be announced on 11th November via UKTPO’s Twitter: @UK_TPO
Zoom Webinar
Thursday 15 October 2020
Time: 12:30 – 13:30
A expert panel discussion on joint analysis of new tariff agreements by the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO), the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the Center for Global Development (CGD.
Chair:
Presenters:
Tuesday 15 September | 14:00 – 17:00 BST
Wednesday 16 September | 14:00-17:00 BST
Download the conference programme for more details.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s conference was held virtually in the form of two webinars.
There were four presentations and two roundtable discussions over the course of two afternoons. Catch up on the sessions below:
Presenter: Facundo Albornoz Crespo, University of Nottingham
Discussant: Ingo Borchert, University of Sussex and UKTPO
Chair: Michael Gasiorek, University of Sussex and UKTPO
Presenter: Emily Lydgate, University of Sussex and UKTPO
Discussant: Stephanie Switzer, Strathclyde Law School
Chair: Femi Amao, University of Sussex
Panellists: Jodie Keane, Overseas Development Institute; Rohinton P. Medhora, Centre for International Governance Innovation
Chair: Creon Butler, Chatham House
Presenter: Michael Gasiorek, University of Sussex and UKTPO
Discussant: Bernard Hoekman, European University Institute
Chair: Ingo Borchert, University of Sussex and UKTPO
Presenter: Anna Maria Mayda, Georgetown University
Discussant: Mattia Di Ubaldo, University of Sussex and UKTPO
Chair: Alasdair Smith, University of Sussex and UKTPO
Panellists:
Dr Katy Hayward, Queen’s University Belfast
Professor Anand Menon, King’s College London
Professor Graeme Roy, University of Strathclyde and Fraser of Allander Institute
Dr Thomas Sampson, London School of Economics
Chair: Professor L. Alan Winters, CB, Director, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Download the conference programme for more details
Wednesday 9 September | 09:30 – 10:30 BST
As well as being the first major economy to commit to a net-zero emissions by 2050 climate target, the UK also has ambitious trade policy goals of providing multilateral leadership and concluding major new trade agreements. In this event, we examine the UK policies required to achieve net-zero and how they can be integrated into UK trade strategy, and consider wider implications of net-zero targets for the international trade system.
Speaker: Dr Emily Lydgate, Senior Lecturer in Law; Fellow, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Discussant: Professor Andy Jordan, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia
Chair: Professor Jim Rollo, Fellow, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Wednesday 8 July | 13:30 – 14:30 BST
Chair:
Speakers:
Monday 29 June 2020 | 16:00 BST (17:00 CET; 11:00 EST)
As nations scrambled this year to source medical supplies – equipment, drugs and personal protective equipment – 89 governments imposed 154 restrictions on exports and 104 governments introduced 154 reforms easing imports. In addition, there is increasing talk about reshoring production or moving it closer to home. This is not the way to increase global supplies of necessary goods, nor to ensure their equitable distribution.
This panel of experts from academia and a representative from the medical supplies sector will discuss how trade in medicines and medical supplies can be facilitated, and how trade policy can contribute to public health. The panel will discuss the possibilities of linking import liberalization measures, such as tariff cuts, with constraints on export restrictions of medical supplies, including expanding the coverage and membership of the WTO Pharmaceutical Agreement.
Introduced by:
Speakers:
May 2020
The unprecedented economic crisis triggered by the outbreak of Covid-19 is already having dramatic effects on world trade and appears very likely to trigger lasting changes to the world trading system, regardless of how the next phase of “opening up” from lock downs progresses.
Against this background the Global Economy and Finance Programme at Chatham House and the UK Trade Policy Observatory at University of Sussex co-hosted a series of three virtual expert round tables in May which will explore how world trade and the world trading system are likely to be changed by the crisis in both the short- and longer- term.
Tuesday, 12 May 2020 | 09.30 – 10.30 BST
Monday, 18 May 2020 | 12.00-13.00 BST
Friday, 29 May 2020 | 12.00-13.00 BST
Our apologies for any inconvenience caused, but we believe, that in light of the Coronavirus pandemic, it will be safer for everyone if we cancel this event.
Date: Wednesday 18 March 2020
Time: 09:00 – 10:00
Venue: Chatham House, St James’s Square, London, SW1Y4LE
The UK government’s public consultation on tariffs closes on 5 March. This meeting will discuss the proposals floated in the consultation document and consider their effects on tariff and protection levels, prices and variety. It will also place tariff policy in the wider context of trade policy, including the UK’s future trading relationship with the EU and the USA.
Speakers
Michael Gasiorek, Professor of Economics, UKTPO Fellow, University of Sussex; Director, Interanalysis
Julia Magntorn Garrett, Research Officer, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Discussants
Allie Renison, Head of Europe and Trade Policy at the Institute of Directors
Maximiliano Mendez-Parra, Senior Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute
Chair
Professor Jim Rollo, Associate Fellow, Global Economy and Finance Department, Chatham House; Deputy Director, UK Trade Policy Observatory.
Date: Wednesday 4 December 2019
Time: 12:30 – 13:30
Venue: Chatham House, St James’s Square, London, SW1Y4LE
This general election is very much due to Brexit – or rather the failure of getting a deal through Parliament. Whoever wins the election will have little time to get their strategy for Brexit up and running to meet the latest Brexit deadline of 31 January 2020. So what are the parties policies for the UK’s future trade?
This event will present and discuss what the five main parties’ manifestos imply for future UK trade. Each manifesto will be presented and analysed by a UKTPO fellow, all to be followed by a Q&A session.
Speakers
Michael Gasiorek, Professor of Economics, University of Sussex; Director, Interanalysis; Fellow, UKTPO
Julia Magntorn Garrett, Research Officer, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Prof Jim Rollo, Deputy Director, UKTPO; Associate Fellow, Chatham House
Nicolo Tamberi, Research Officer in the Economics of Brexit, University of Sussex
L. Alan Winters, Professor of Economics, Director, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Date: Thursday 7 November 2019
Time: 17:00 – 20:00
Venue: Upstairs at the Grand Central Pub (opposite Brighton Station), 29-30 Surrey St, Brighton, BN1 3PA
At the moment, uncertainty seems to be the only certainty with Brexit, especially now with a General Election looming. If you want to know more about how the different Brexit options could affect you and your family – from the food on your plate, your job security, business regulations and so much more – just come along and ask our experts.
We will welcome you with a glass of wine and some nibbles as you settle down to listen to short interviews with our UKTPO experts. You will also have the opportunity to ask, and get impartial answers to your questions about the impact of Brexit on your life.
We will run a rolling programme, so just pitch up and stay for as long as you wish!
This event is part of the Economic & Social Research Council’s Festival of Social Science
Date: Wednesday 6 November 2019
Time: 09:30 – 16:20
Venue: Chatham House, St James’s Square, London, SW1Y4LE
We are delighted to invite you to our second annual UK Trade Policy Observatory conference. This year’s conference will focus on the legal areas of trade policy:
The following papers will be presented:
Blockchain: Creating and Eliminating Trade in Services
Presented by: Dr Weiwei Zhang, International Trade Analyst, Sidley
Discussant: Dr Gabriel Gari , Reader in International Economic Law, QMUL
China’s role in the international trading system
Presented by: Dr Ping Wang, Assistant Professor in Law, University of Nottingham
Discussant: Dr Femi Amao, Reader in Law, University of Sussex
Official Export Support – compliance and competition concerns
Presented by: Dr Kamala Dawar, Fellow UKTPO; Senior Lecturer in Commercial Law
Discussant: Lauge Poulsen, Associate Professor in International Political Economy, UCL
Strategic litigation and health regulation: implications for International Economic Law
Presented by: Fiona Smith, Professor in International Economic Law, University of Leeds
Discussant: Federico Ortino, Reader of International Economic Law, KCL
Development, labour standards and sustainability in trade agreements
Presented by: Dr Clair Gammage, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Bristol
Discussant: Dr Lorand Bartels, Reader in International Law; Fellow, Trinity House, University of Cambridge
Retaining versus reforming EU food safety legislation: selected issues for a US-UK trade negotiation
Presented by: Dr Emily Lydgate, Fellow UKTPO; Senior Lecturer in Environmental Law
Discussant: Dr Tom West; UK Environment Lead, ClientEarth
The conference will conclude with a panel discussion and Q&A on
Chair:
Dr Anna Jerzewska, Free trade agreements and trade facilitation specialist
Panellists:
Dr Lorand Bartels, Reader in International Law; Fellow, Trinity House, University of Cambridge
Laura Bannister, Senior adviser on EU-UK trade, Trade Justice Movement
Peter Holmes, Fellow, UKTPO; Reader in Economics, University of Sussex
Andrew Hood, Partner, Regulatory & Trade, FieldFisher LLP
Date: Wednesday 9 October 2019
Time: 18:00 – 19:30, followed by a light reception
Venue: The Graduate Institute Geneva, Auditorium A2 | Maison de la Paix, Chemin Eugène Rigot, 2 GENEVA, Switzerland
Chair:
Professor L. Alan Winters, Director, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Panel:
The political turmoil over when and how to exit the European Union has pushed aside the substantive debate over the shape of post-Brexit UK trade policy. Panellists from the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) will discuss challenges and opportunities of designing UK trade policy.
Important cornerstones include:
The panel discussion will be followed by a light reception in the hall of Petal Two.
Date: Tuesday 1 October 2019
Time: 12:30 – 13:30
Venue: Chatham House, St James’s Square, London, SW1Y 4LE
Chair:
Prof Jim Rollo, Deputy Director, UKTPO; Associate Fellow, Chatham House
Panel:
In the five months since the last extension of the Brexit deadline, nothing has been resolved. The questions about the UK’s trading relationship with the EU remain as open as before, as do those about what sort of relationship it should seek with other partners. The world has not stood still, however, and so the UKTPO is convening another panel to consider constructive ways of moving forward.
The panel will discuss potential trajectories for UK trade policy, followed by a question and answer session.
Date: Thursday 18 July 2019
Time: 12:00 to 13:00
Venue: 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH
Speakers:
Dr Michael Gasiorek, Senior Lecturer in Economics, UKTPO Fellow, University of Sussex; Director, Interanalysis
Julia Magntorn, Research Officer, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Discussant:
Torsten Bell, Chief Executive, Resolution Foundation
Chair:
L. Alan Winters, Professor of Economics, Director, UKTPO, University of Sussex
Economists have long argued, and with good justification, that international trade brings overall benefits to economies. However, increasing trade is likely to create losers as well as winners. As the UK prepares to leave the EU and have an independent trade policy it is important to understand how future trade agreements, or policy changes, may affect economic outcomes such as prices, productivity and output, and through these, individuals and regions.
In this meeting we will discuss the UKTPO’s latest Briefing Paper, ‘Winners and Losers from International Trade: What do we know and what are the implications for policy?’ providing a conceptual background of how trade changes may result in winners and losers – be these consumers, workers, regions, or industries, and giving an overview of what the empirical evidence tells us about how developed economies have adjusted to changes in trade. Making good (trade) policy in this context is complicated. We consider potential policy responses that could help losers from international trade adjust, and ensure that the winners can take advantage of the new opportunities created by trade liberalisation.
Date: Thursday 13 June 2019
Time: 12:30 to 13:30
Venue: Chatham House, St James’s Square, London, SW1Y4LE
Discussant:
John Cooke, Chairman of the Liberalisation of Trade in Services Committee, TheCityUK
Chair:
Professor Jim Rollo, Associate Fellow, Global Economy and Finance Department, Chatham House; Deputy Director, UK Trade Policy Observatory
Overview:
The debate on the UK’s future trade deals with non-EU countries has been mainly focused on rolling over the EU’s existing Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). What is missing is a far-sighted strategy in the case that the UK manages an orderly Brexit and has a transition period until the end of 2020. If not just rolling over, what would be the possible options?
In the case of a future UK-Korea deal, the UK could potentially negotiate a new FTA built on the Korea-EU FTA (KorEU) or negotiate a completely new FTA modeled on the Korea-US FTA (KORUS). Our comparative analysis of KorEU and KORUS in services reveals that the two agreements took very different approaches for services trade liberalisation. Both achieved “GATS-plus” liberalisation commitments from Korea. KORUS seems to have achieved slightly more than KorEU. However, KORUS is more complicated and less transparent than KorEU. It also contains more WTO-inconsistent features. The KORUS option would enable the UK to better pursue its own specific needs since it would not be directly bound by KorEU. On the other hand, the WTO-inconsistent aspects of KORUS would need to be avoided, based on a clear vision of UK’s contribution towards the future multilateral trading system. Either way, the UK would face two stumbling blocks: the UK’s lack of negotiating power and the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clauses in KorEU and KORUS (and other FTAs involving Korea). Whatever the scenario, the UK Government is urged to build its trade negotiating capacities to cope with these challenges.
Date: Tuesday 28 May 2019
Time: 12:30 – 1:30pm
Venue: Chatham House, St James’s Square, London, SW1Y 4LE
Speakers:
Dr Emily Lydgate, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex; Fellow, UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO)
Ffion Thomas, Regulatory Compliance Professional
Discussant:
Alexandra Sinclair, Fellow in Brexit, Parliament and the Rule of Law, Public Law Project
Chair:
Professor Jim Rollo, Associate Fellow, Global Economy and Finance Department, Chatham House; Deputy Director, UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO)
Overview:
While the future of our relationship with the EU remains uncertain, an important element of the UK’s preparation has already been undertaken, with the development of a large new body – over 10,000 pages – of legislation that converts EU legislation into UK domestic law. Though presented by the UK government as limited to technical rather than policy changes, the process has required the UK to develop an array of new procedures and competencies. As a result, in contrast to the ‘legal lock’ of the EU, much of UK law – in particular relating to environmental protection – will take the form of secondary legislation to which the government can make future changes relatively easily.
In this event, the speakers will take stock of the implications of this process focusing in particular on statutory instruments (SIs) relating to pesticides. The speakers will note that these SIs consolidate powers to UK ministers to amend, revoke and make pesticide legislation and both weaken enforcement arrangements and the requirement to obtain scientific advice.
Date: Thursday 4 April 2019
Time: 9:30 – 10:30am
Venue: Chatham House, St James’s Square, London, SW1Y 4LE
Panel:
Chris Giles, Economics Editor, Financial Times
Dr Emily Lydgate, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex; Fellow, UKTPO
Prof L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics, University of Sussex; Director, UKTPO
Overview:
No-one knows yet what is going to happen in regards to Brexit. But what is clear is that we have only a few weeks left to sort things out. And whatever direction Brexit takes will pose serious questions about, and challenges for, the UK’s future trade policy.
The panel will discuss potential trajectories for UK trade policy, followed by an open question and answer session with the panel and other Fellows of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
Date: Tuesday 26 February 2019
Time: 9:30 – 10:30am
Venue: Chatham House, St James’s Square, London, SW1Y 4LE
Speakers:
Dr Peter Holmes, Reader in Economics, University of Sussex Fellow, UKTPO
Dr Ilona Serwicka, Research Fellow in the Economics of Brexit; Fellow, UKTPO
Discussant:
Paul Swinney, Director of Policy and Research, Centre for Cities
Chair:
Professor Jim Rollo, Deputy Director, UKTPO; Associate Fellow, Chatham House
Since the EU referendum, there has been a growing interest in the reintroduction of free zones in the United Kingdom. Those advocating free zones believe that they will help to boost British trade after Brexit and promote economic growth. Although there are potential benefits and savings that businesses can accrue from simplified customs procedures, and relief on customs duties and tariff inversion, the authors explain that such benefits will be very limited in the UK context.
The US experience is not very illuminating: whilst there are many jobs in their free zones, there is little evidence how many are net creations and the main purpose of the US free zones appears to be to supply the domestic market without having to pay high tariffs on imported inputs.
While there is a scope for free zones shaping an export-oriented place-based regional development programme, policymakers should devise measures that (i) counteract possible diversion of economic activity from elsewhere, and (ii) offer a wider set of incentives than just free zones, while keeping within our WTO and any ‘level playing field’ obligations that arise from our trade agreements.
Date: Wednesday 28 November 2018
Time: 9.00 Registration & Light Breakfast
9.30 till 11 am Presentations and Q&A
Venue: National Institute of Economic and Social Research, 2 Dean Trench St, Smith Square, London SW1P 3HE
Brexit and manufacturing jobs by Dr. Michael Gasiorek, Dr. Ilona Serwicka and Prof. Alasdair Smith, UKTPO (University of Sussex)
This paper investigates the effect of Brexit on the manufacturing sector, looking specifically at the detailed sectors that are most vulnerable to Brexit. Preliminary findings, based on partial equilibrium modelling, suggest that high-tech and medium-high tech manufacturing sectors are more at risk of a significant decline in domestic production than medium and medium-low tech sectors.
The Sectoral Implications of Brexit by Dr. Garry Young (NIESR)
This paper will investigate the effect of Brexit on the economy more broadly, including the service sectors using a general equilibrium macroeconomic modelling approach. Findings from that approach suggest that manufacturing may be shielded from the effects of a hard-Brexit as exchange rate depreciation shifts the burden of adjustment to consumer-facing industries.
Places are limited, therefore to ensure attendance please RSVP as soon as possible.
or call Luca on 020 7654 1931
Please note: Due to the nature of NIESR’s Grade II listed building, we are unable to provide step-free access to our facilities and the Library is not currently accessible to wheelchair users, or those with limited mobility. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please do let us know in advance how we can assist your visit to the Institute – we are happy to discuss alternative arrangement in order to access our events.
20 November 2018, 17:30 – 19:15
The Clarendon Centre, 47-49 New England Street, Brighton, BN1 4GQ
Speakers: Professor L. Alan Winters, Director, UKTPO Director, University of Sussex
Dr Ilona Serwicka, Research Officer in the Economics of Brexit, University of Sussex
Discussant: Cllr Garry Wall, Leader, Mid Sussex District Council and Chair of the Greater Brighton Economic Board
Chair: Christina Ewbank, CEO and Past President of Eastbourne unLtd Chamber of Commerce
Overview
A ‘no deal’ Brexit could lead to an employment loss of around 39,000 jobs in Hampshire and Sussex, this is according to a new study by researchers at the UK Trade Policy Observatory, who analysed the impact of Brexit on employment across the 34 parliamentary constituencies within Hampshire and Sussex.
In the UK, South East England is the region most heavily engaged in cross-border trade. In 2017, the South East exported £45.3bn worth of goods and £34bn worth of services – and nearly a half of these exports were destined for the EU. This large value of cross-border trade, with high exposure to trade with the EU, means that a ‘no deal’ Brexit could be particularly disruptive to the South East of England’s economy.
After allowing for the fact that people often live and work in different places, we estimate that the shock to residents of Hampshire and Sussex could be equivalent to the loss of about 43,000 jobs. The research suggests that constituencies such as Aldershot, Eastleigh and Brighton Pavilion may be among those most heavily impacted.
Given that Brexit decisions will ultimately be taken on the floor of the House of Commons, this study will provide a base from which Hampshire and Sussex MPs can start to assess the impact of Brexit on their constituents.
15 November 2018, 12:30 – 13:30
Chatham House, 10 St James’s Square, London, SW1Y 4LE
Speakers:
Discussant:
Chair:
Overview
This meeting will provide a realistic view of what trade agreements in services can really offer. The UK government has high expectations about future services trade deals with non-EU countries. However, in practice, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) typically only provide greater legal certainty about current applied policies rather than bringing about actual trade liberalisation in services.
Based on other countries’ experiences, the UK government will face several significant challenges and complexities in negotiating services FTAs with non-EU countries. For example, services trade negotiations are all about regulations, but the domestic authorities responsible for regulation are typically risk averse (it’s their job!). They are usually not well set-up for international collaboration and see little benefit from it in terms of their own objectives. To make progress on FTAs, the UK government will need to encourage many bodies across government to engage in the negotiations. Second, the UK has little to offer to its FTA partners because, except for Mode 4 (movement of natural persons), which is highly sensitive, UK services markets are already de facto pretty open.
A third complexity is that the UK’s bargaining power will be limited by the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clauses for services policies that exist in several of the EU’s existing FTAs. These mean that any concessions that partners could offer to the UK may have to be extended ‘for free’ to the EU (an economy six times larger than the UK); in addition, the EU will be discouraged from offering the UK generous terms because these will have to be extended to countries like Japan and Canada.
Overall, therefore, it is not realistic to expect that future trade deals with non-EU countries will be able to recoup the losses of services trade that the UK will incur by leaving the European Single Market.
The meeting will be based on two new Briefing Papers from the UKTPO:
Briefing Paper 24: UK’s future services trade deals with non-EU countries: A reality check explains why it is so difficult to achieve actual liberalisation in service negotiations and what FTAs, in practice, can offer. The Paper then discusses the major factors that diminish the UK’s future FTA partners’ incentives for making concessions.
Briefing Paper 25: Most Favoured Nation clauses in EU trade agreements: one more hurdle for UK negotiators provides a comprehensive overview of the EU’s Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clauses on services and investment. It discusses their scope and the exceptions they contain, and then considers how these clauses are likely to limit the extent of concessions that the EU and its existing partners are prepared to grant the UK.
31 October 2018, 9:15 – 10:15am
10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH
Speakers:
Discussant:
Chair:
Overview
The United Kingdom has historically been one of the main recipients of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting more greenfield investment than other large European economies. However, the Brexit vote has introduced considerable uncertainty over the future growth potential of the UK market, and the ease of cross-border flow of goods and services. Following a peak of inward investment activity in early 2015, the number of FDI project announcements for the UK and the UK’s share of the European market for FDI have been falling.
In this briefing paper we provide an analysis of inward FDI to the UK before and after the EU referendum, looking at the main foreign investors, which sectors they invest in and how trends in inward FDI have evolved over time. Our work suggests that following the Brexit vote, inward investment has been 16-20 per cent lower than it would have been if the UK had voted to remain a member of the EU, but that this impact differs depending on the sector.
3 October 2018, 18:30 – 20:00
The Graduate Institute Geneva, Auditorium A2 | Maison de la Paix, Chemin Eugène Rigot, 2 GENEVA
Dr Michael GASIOREK, UK Trade Policy Observatory
Dr Ilona SERWICKA, UK Trade Policy Observatory
Prof. Alasdair SMITH, UK Trade Policy Observatory
Richard BALDWIN, Professor of International Economics, Graduate Institute, Geneva
Chair: Prof. L. Alan WINTERS CB, Director, UK Trade Policy Observatory
The discussion will be followed by a light reception in the Hall of Petal 2 (Maison de la Paix)
Dr Michael Gasiorek, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Sussex; Fellow, UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO)
Suzannah F Walmesley, Principal Consultant, ABPmer
Discussant:
Matthew Whittles, Team Leader: Trade in fish | EU and International Fisheries, DEFRA will be the discussant.
Chair:
Jim Rollo CMG, Emeritus Professor of European Economics, University of Sussex; Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory and Associate Fellow Chatham House
Overview
Leaving the EU will involve some combination of changes in tariffs, non-tariff measures, and also the amount of fish quotas that can be caught by the UK and the EU respectively. Several politicians and commentators have stated that Brexit means that the UK can take back control of its fishing waters. The aim of this Briefing Paper is twofold. First, to detail the policy environment, and the policy considerations facing the UK government in the Brexit negotiations. Secondly, to provide an empirical assessment of what the impact on leaving the EU might be on the seafood industry. As the nature of the UK’s future trade relations with the EU are still uncertain, in this paper we explore several simulations which aim, broadly speaking, to capture the key variants of Brexit that appear to be under discussion.
Tuesday 3 July 2018, 09.15-16.15
Chatham House, St James’s Square, London
Please see the conference brochure for full details.
Tuesday 19 June 2018, 12.30-1.30pm
Chatham House, St James’s Square, London
Speakers:
Chair:
Jim Rollo CMG, Emeritus Professor of European Economics, University of Sussex; Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory and Associate Fellow Chatham House
Overview
Both US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Theresa May have stated their keenness to negotiate and agree the groundwork for a bilateral trade agreement after Brexit. With President Trump set to visit the UK next month and less than a year until the UK leaves the EU, this roundtable event focuses on what the key issues are likely to be and what a transatlantic agreement may, or may not, comprise. The panellists outline the general geopolitical landscape within which a UK – US trade agreement will be negotiated, including the WTO, discuss some potential issues that may infringe on a swift agreement and also offer insight on how these issues could be resolved. These include the compatibility of regulatory regimes, public support for free trade and economic interests.
Wednesday 2 May 2018, 9 – 10am
Chatham House, St James’s Square, London
Speakers:
Dr Emily Lydgate, Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex, UKTPO Fellow
Dr Rob Amos, Research Officer, University of Sussex
Discussant:
Dr Max Mendez-Parra, Senior Research Fellow, ODI
Chair:
Professor Jim Rollo CMG, University of Sussex, Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory and Associate Fellow Chatham House
Overview
As the UK contemplates ambitious new trade agreements, it needs to develop mechanisms to ensure that these uphold its commitment to environmental protection and high labour standards, and benefit all of the UK. As it has not managed external trade independently for many years, there are no existing procedures for scoping, negotiating and ratifying trade agreements. Proposed legislation does not fill the gaps, and questions remain about the governance of new trade agreements, as well as those ‘rolled over’ from the EU.
In this context, we will examine approaches to:
(1) integrating sustainable development objectives into the negotiating process; and
(2) reflecting these objectives through trade agreements.
We conclude that the UK’s ability to take leadership in this area will hinge on its ability to develop a robust framework to ensure that the negotiation process is transparent and allows for public consultation, and that the impact of new trade agreements – including on the environment and vulnerable populations – are assessed and addressed. In this respect, the UK can draw from, and improve upon, the EU’s experience with Sustainability Impact Assessment. We identify the potential significance of third-party trade agreements, most imminently with the US, in shaping UK domestic environmental and consumer protection.
Finally, we highlight implications of the UK’s inheritance of the EU’s ‘cooperative approach’ to trade and sustainable development through the continuation of its trade agreements.
Thursday 22 March 2018, 12 noon to 1pm
10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y
Speakers: Professor L. Alan Winters, Director, UKTPO Director, University of Sussex
Julia Magntorn, Research Officer in the Economics of Brexit, University of Sussex
Discussant: Christophe Bondy, Special Counsel, Cooley LLP
Chair: Gemma Tetlow, Economics Correspondent for the Financial Times
Overview
In the search for a framework for a future UK-EU trade relationship, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA) has come under the spotlight. To inform the debate surrounding a potential ‘Canada plus’ model for the UK post-Brexit, the UK Trade Policy Observatory’s latest Briefing Paper looks in detail at the services and investment liberalisation that the EU undertook in CETA.
We score the EU’s commitments in CETA according to their degree of liberalisation and aggregate the scores across a wide range of services sectors. This, in turn, allows a comparison between sectors and helps us to identify the sectors where the UK may want to seek ‘pluses’ in a UK-EU context. Further, we evaluate the extent to which the EU’s commitments in CETA improve on pre-existing regimes by comparing the degree of liberalisation in CETA with the EU’s prior commitments in the GATS. Finally, we discuss the extent to which the pluses that the UK may seek are likely to be achievable.
Tuesday 6 February 2018, 1.30 – 2.30pm
Chatham House, St James’s Square, London
Overview
Trade in manufactures constitutes 65% of the UK’s trade with the EU and nearly 50% of the UK’s exports of manufactures goes to the EU.
In this new Briefing Paper, we look at the possible effects of Brexit on UK manufacturing in much greater sectoral detail than has been done before. For 122 manufacturing sectors, we estimate the exposure of these sectors to different versions of Brexit. Our projections depend on whether we assume the UK leaves the Customs Union and the Single Market, and on whether the UK makes a free trade agreement with the EU and is able to carry over existing free trade agreements with non-EU countries.
In all cases, we find that introducing tariff and non-tariff barriers raises the prices that UK consumers and producers will face, and leads to reduced UK exports; but for some sectors, the increase in protection leads to higher UK output. The impact of Brexit is likely to be significantly different between high-tech and lower-tech sectors.
Speakers:
Dr Michael Gasiorek, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Sussex, Managing Director of Interanalysis; member of UKTPO
Dr Ilona Serwicka, Research Fellow in the Economics of Brexit, University of Sussex, member of UKTPO
Professor Alasdair Smith, Emeritus Professor of Economics, former Vice-Chancellor, University of Sussex, member of the UKTPO
Discussant :
TBC
Chair:
Professor Jim Rollo CMG, University of Sussex, Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory and Associate Fellow Chatham House
Please register here
Thursday 11 January 2018, 1.30-2.30pm
Chatham House, St James’s Square, London
Speaker
Dr Ingo Borchert, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Sussex, Fellow of the UKTPO
Discussants
Anastassia Beliakova, Head of Trade Policy, British Chambers of Commerce
Prof Philip McCann, Professor of Urban and Regional Economics, Sheffield University Management School
Chair
Adam Ward, Deputy Director, Chatham House
Overview
This event will focus on UK services exports, a relevant but neglected area in the Brexit debate. In particular, the UK Trade Policy Observatory will go beyond trade at the national level and describe the rich pattern by which the main UK regions engage in exporting services. The panel will discuss the main findings and will take questions from the audience.
UK regions differ in the kinds of services they are producing and to which destinations these services are exported. In order to gauge the exposure to a potential deterioration of market access for services to the EU, we describe in detail the distribution of services exports across regions and sectors, covering both cross-border trade in services and services inputs embodied in manufacturing exports. Importantly, we consider the extent to which services exports are directed towards EU markets at a regionally disaggregated level. As such, the analysis conveys a sense how the impact of Brexit may be felt differently across UK regions.
Tuesday 16 January 2018, 09.00-10.30
10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London
Speakers
Nick Jacob, PhD Candidate in Economics at the University of Sussex
Dr Peter Holmes, Reader in Economics, University of Sussex, Director of CARIS and InterAnalysis; Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
Discussants
Adam Marshall, Director General, British Chambers of Commerce
Anastasia Beliakova, Head of Trade Policy, British Chambers of Commerce
Chair
Professor Jim Rollo CMG, University of Sussex, Deputy Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory; and Associate Fellow, Chatham House
Overview:
At this event, the UK Trade Policy Observatory and the British Chambers of Commerce will provide insight into the experience of firms declaring origin with the use of Certificates of Origin, how well they understand the system, and why they choose the options they do. The panel will then discuss the several different systems for declaring the origin of goods and possible options post-Brexit.
When the UK leaves the EU, proving the origin of a given good or product will be a far bigger issue for UK businesses exporting to the EU. Currently, EU customs procedures are minimal since, being a customs union, all goods produced in the EU or imports from third countries that have cleared customs are in “free circulation”, and need no further proof of where they originated. After Brexit, the UK and EU may sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). There may even be arrangements that allow EU components to be counted as being of UK origin for FTAs with non-EU countries. However, any preferential Rules of Origin arrangements will require the originating status of goods to be proven – meaning that many more business will need to learn to navigate this landscape.
Wednesday 29 November 2017, 5-6pm
Chatham House, London
Speaker:
Dr Michael Gasiorek, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Sussex, Managing Director of Interanalysis; member of UKTPO
Discussants:
Andrew Hood, Senior Director with Dechert LLP and a qualified barrister with extensive international and EU law expertise
Dr Peter Holmes, Reader in Economics, University of Sussex, Director of CARIS and InterAnalysis; member of UKTPO.
Chair:
Professor Jim Rollo CMG, University of Sussex, Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory and Associate Fellow Chatham House
Overview:
Michael Gasiorek will present the UKTPO’s latest briefing paper on grandfathering. The EU currently has free trade agreements with over 60 countries. When the UK leaves the EU the UK will no longer be a party to these agreements yet they account for over 15% of total UK imports and exports. The government’s position is that it intends to roll these agreements over (known as grandfathering) so that they continue to apply to the UK and so that existing producers and consumers are not negatively affected. The government has also indicated that the existing partner countries are willing to do this. Dr Michael Gasiorek will outline why grandfathering is important, why it may be tricky to achieve, and why even if the agreements could be rolled-over there is likely to be an impact on UK, EU and free trade area producers and consumers. A key theme is that what might appear to be a bilateral issue of rolling over between the UK and an FTA partner, is, in fact, a trilateral issue which also includes the EU. Michael will explain why this is the case and make suggestions as to priorities which should be focused on and possible ways forward.
Andrew Hood will focus on addressing the legal issues of grandfathering
Peter Holmes will add to the conversation and comment on Michael and Andrew’s contributions.
Wednesday 8 November 2017, 1:30-2:30pm
Chatham House, London
Speakers:
Discussant: Sue Davies, Strategic Policy Adviser, Which?
Chair: Jim Rollo CMG, Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory, Emeritus Professor of European Economics and Associate Fellow Chatham House, UK
Overview
L Alan Winters will discuss the cost of living consequences of Brexit based on RF/UKTPO paper, ‘Changing Lanes: The impact of different post-Brexit trading policies on the cost of living’ and a paper to be released in early Nov in the NIER.
Peter Holmes will present the UKTPO’s latest briefing paper on the recent challenges facing consumers in world trade.
Sue Davies will share her thoughts on the papers and this will be followed by a question and answer session.
Tuesday, 26 September 2017 – 08:00-09:30
The Graduate Institute, Restaurant Maison de la Paix, Petal 5, 8th Floor, 2, Chèmin Eugène Rigot, Geneva 1201, Switzerland
The UK faces a complex re-design of trading arrangements after BREXIT. There has been much discussion but most has focussed on trade in goods, whereas the UK is primarily a service economy and services are critical to almost all economic activity. The panel of experts from the UK Trade Policy Observatory will lead a discussion of aspects of services trade after Brexit, including:
Speakers:
Introduced and moderated by Theresa CARPENTER , Graduate Institute Geneva; Executive Director of the Graduate Institute’s Centre for Trade and Economic Integration; Associate Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory
Book your place here
19 May 2017 – 16:00 – 17.30
Chatham House, London
Register via Eventbrite
Speaker
PROFESSOR KYM ANDERSON, George Gollin Professor of Economics, Executive Director of the Wine Economics Research Centre, University of Adelaide and Australian National University, Australia
Discussants
JANCIS ROBINSON, writes weekly for the Financial Times and daily for JancisRobinson.com, the first Master of Wine from outside the wine trade.
TAMARA ROBERTS, Chief Executive Officer, Ridgeview Wine Estate
Chair
PROFESSOR JIM ROLLO CMG, Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory, Emeritus Professor of European Economics and Associate Fellow Chatham House, UK
Wine represents over 40% of the share of UK alcohol consumption in the UK today. Brexit is of considerable significance to wine producers and consumers across the world, because Britain has always imported a major share of the world’s wine, especially in value terms. The UK accounts for more than one-sixth of the wine export earnings of seven key wine countries, and for three of them (Australia, the US and New Zealand) it buys more than one-third of their volume of wine exports.
To get a sense of how wine markets might be affected by Brexit, Professor Kym Anderson uses a model of the world’s wine markets to project those markets to 2025 then adjusts for possible Brexit effects. Professor Anderson, a world authority on the wine market, will present the resulting impacts on bilateral wine trade values and volumes for commercial and fine still wines as well as for sparkling wines at this event.
5 April 2017 – 17:30 – 19:30
Brighthelm, North Road, Brighton, BN1 1YD
Register via Eventbrite
Speakers
PROFESSOR L. ALAN WINTERS, Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex and Director of UKTPO
DR EMILY LYDGATE, Lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex and Fellow of UKTPO
Chair (TBC)
Members of the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) at the University of Sussex will outline the key trade issues post-Brexit and provide economic and legal analysis of the UK’s trade relations post-Brexit. They will scope out a number of potential scenarios and the possible impact of each on the South East region.
The event will consist of short presentations from the panellists, a World Café session involving all attendees and a question and answer session. Refreshments will be served. The World Café session will provide participants with the opportunity to discuss the things they think are important, outline what trade issues they want to know more about, and what they think the government should do for trade in post-Brexit Britain.
Through these events UKTPO hopes to gather baseline data of stakeholder opinions and knowledge gaps. This data can help inform the focus of the Observatory’s future publication outputs, and our fellows can also feedback to policymakers, providing the opportunity for more inclusive trade policy-making.
28 March 2017 – 12:00 to 14:00
Chatham House, London
Speaker
DR KAMALA DAWAR, Lecturer in Commercial Law at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
Discussant
PROFESSOR ALASDAIR SMITH, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Former Vice-Chancellor, University of Sussex
DR SWATI DHINGRA, Lecturer in Economics, LSE
Chair
PROFESSOR JIM ROLLO CMG, Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory, Emeritus Professor of European Economics and Associate Fellow Chatham House
The sheer value of public procurement contracts make them important both economically and for providing society with essential public goods, services and infrastructure. Yet, Brexit could fragment government procurement policy within the UK, as well as disrupt the UK’s relationship with the WTO GPA and other preferential procurement agreements.
At this meeting, the speaker will look at some of the legal issues that will affect the UK’s public procurement laws and policies following Brexit. She will put forward a response to some of the potentially negative consequences of Brexit that could undermine value for money, transparency and competition within the UK’s lucrative markets for government procurement contracts. This will be followed by a discussion.
22 Feb 2017 – 13:00 to 14:00
10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH
Speakers
DR EMILY LYDGATE, Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex and Fellow, UK Trade Policy Observatory
PROFESSOR JIM ROLLO CMG, University of Sussex, Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory and Associate Fellow Chatham House
DR FEDERICO ORTINO, Reader, King’s College London
When the UK leaves the EU Customs Union and the Single Market, could it still preserve some or most of the benefits of special access? In this event, we consider how WTO rules and practices will constrain and define any UK-EU agreement. While they rule out some solutions that may superficially appear politically convenient, like special market access solely for cars, they do not prohibit a deep and significant trade and cooperation agreement. While the parties may not be able to reach this agreement, they should not dress political failure up as legal impossibility.
Download a PDF of Dr Emily Lydgate’s presentation slides.
22 Nov 2016 – 17:00 to 18:00
Chatham House, London
Speakers
DR INGO BORCHERT, Lecturer In Economics, University Of Sussex
JOHN COOKE, Chairman of the Liberalisation of Trade in Services Committee, ThecityUK
CHAIR: JIM ROLLO, Associate Fellow, International Economics Department, Chatham House
Brexit will have important repercussions for the UK’s economic ties with the EU in the realm of services markets. Services trade is economically significant for a number of reasons. Producer services such as finance, transportation or professional services are inputs into both the production and international exchange of goods, whereas trade in other services directly affects consumer welfare. This event provides an overview of prevailing services trade flows as well as trade policies. It will commence with a picture of current UK services trade across the various modes of supply. The revealed strengths of the UK in certain services sectors could inform negotiating priorities going forward. In terms of services trade policies, the event will discuss the different market access regimes at the multilateral level as well as through preferential agreements. The event will take the format of a presentation, followed by an open discussion.
15 Nov 2016 – 13:00 to 14:00
The Wolfson Room, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH
Speakers
DR PETER HOLMES, Reader In Economics, University of Sussex, Director of Caris and Interanalysis; Member of UKTPO
DR MICHAEL GASIOREK, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Sussex, Managing Director of Interanalysis; Member of UKTPO
PROFESSOR JIM ROLLO CMG, University of Sussex, Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory and Associate Fellow Chatham House
CHAIR: Stephen Pickford, Associate Fellow, International Economics Programme, Chatham House
There are complicated trade-offs between the different options for trading relations between the UK and the EU following the UK’s vote to leave the EU. The mooted options range from a customs union, free trade area, to MFN status. The four main apparently immovable constraints involve:
The EU has not specified either defensive or offensive objectives after Brexit apart from the mantra that the UK cannot cherry pick the bits of the single market it prefers. This discussion will explore whether a hard Brexit leading to accepting WTO terms based on the ‘Most Favoured Nation’ principle is inevitable, and if there is any way the constraints can be relaxed.
28 October 2016
IZA World of Labor, Berlin
Professor L. Alan Winters took part in a panel discussion alongside Dr. Klaus Günter Deutsch, Prof. Michael Burda, Prof. Daniel S. Hamermesh and moderated by Stephan Richter, publisher and Editor-in-Chief of The Globalist.
Watch the video of the discussion: The economic consequences of Brexit – what the experts say
28 September 2016
Graduate Institute, Geneva, as part of the Centre for Trade and Economic Intergration (CTEI) speaker series
Speaker: L. Alan WINTERS Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory
Open Discussion with:
Download a video or PDF of the presentation made by Dr Emily Lydgate and Professor L. Alan Winters on The Landscape of UK Trade Policy after Brexit.
21 Jul 2016 – 18:00 to 19:00
Chatham House London, UK
Participants
DR KAMALA DAWAR, Lecturer in Commercial Law, School of Law, University of Sussex
DR PATRICK LOW, Visiting Professor, University of Sussex; Chief Economist, WTO (1997-2013)
PROFESSOR JIM ROLLO CMG, University of Sussex, Deputy Director UK Trade Policy Observatory and Associate Fellow Chatham House
PROF L. ALAN WINTERS, CB, Director UK Trade Observatory, University of Sussex
CHAIR: DR PAOLA SUBACCHI, Research Director, International Economics, Chatham House
Overview
Following the decision to leave the EU, Britain will have to reconfigure its trade policy, successfully navigating a path through a new international trade landscape.
This event, which will launch the UK Trade Policy Observatory initiative, will analyse the WTO-related issues raised by the UK taking up its new status as an individual member without the responsibilities of an EU member. Such a transition is seen by many as an automatic step, as currently the UK is a member in its own right as well through the EU. The panel will seek to explore whether or not that assumption of an automatic transition is problematic.
Watch the video or listen to the audio recording of Reconstructing Britain’s Trade Policy After Brexit
Katherine Davies March 1st, 2017
Posted In:
A trade secret: What are the UK’s aims as it pursues new deals?, Politics Home, 11 May 2023
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Increasing number of people in United Kingdom go hungry because of price spikes, PBS NewsHour, 13 December 2022
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Brexit blow: exports to Japan fall following ‘historic’ free trade agreement 2022, Inventiva, 1 December 2022
EU to raise concerns over UK’s freeports scheme, The Financial Times, 30 November 2022
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Cardiff Airport wants to become a freeport at the heart of a south-east Wales bid, Wales Online, 29 November 2022
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‘Not Actually Very Good’ Britain’s Post-Brexit Trade Agreements with Japan & Australia, Byline Times, 15 November 2022
Rishi Sunak offers UK’s allies cause for hope but Tory dangers linger, Business Standard, 14 November 2022
Green energy focused Welsh freeport consortium bidder appoints chair, Business Live, 10 November 2022
Sunak Offers UK’s Allies Cause for Hope But Tory Dangers Linger, Bloomberg UK, 6 November 2022
‘Not a priority!’ Biden snubs UK again as trade deal with US stonewalled for years, The Daily Express, 4 November 2022
Michael Gove shares ‘misleading’ post-Brexit trade claim, The National, 3 November 2022
UK unveils investment zones as part of disastrous budget, fDi Intelligence (The Financial Times), 7 October 2022
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Plans for multi-site green energy focused freeport in south-west Wales, Business Live, 30 September 2022
Liz Truss plans radical shift in economic policy, The Financial Times, 20 September 2022
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Can food tariff cuts really put a dent in inflation?, The Grocer, 19 July 2022
Boris Johnson v ethics adviser: what is row over steel tariffs about?, The Guardian, 17 June 2022
Brexit benefits: From Honduras to Hull, via Hong Kong, Yorkshire Bylines, 9 June 2022
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A freeport is to be established in Wales with £26m from the UK government, Wales Online, 12 May 2022
Four things that have changed since the last Brexit cliff edge, The Financial Times, 12 May 2022
Week in London : All eyes on CPTPP, Borderlex, 5 May 2022
Johnson’s plan to slash food tariffs would make little difference to grocery bills, analysis suggests, The Independent, 29 April 2022
UK’s Brexit losses more than 178 times bigger than trade deal gains, The Express, 27 April
‘93% is in each state’ Penny Mordaunt highlights UK tactic to target ‘20% of US economy’, The Express, 24 April
Boris Johnson’s hopes of post-Brexit US-UK trade agreement dashed – ‘Biden not interested’, The Express, 2 April 2022
Tory MP reminds Boris of his private promise EU deal ‘would be temporary’, The Express, 2 April 2022
Any Port In A Storm? The Future For Freeports, Politics Home, 31 March 2022
How conflict is hurting Ukrainian farmers and consumers worldwide, The Breaker, 30 March 2022
Mid-Mornings with Richard Tice, Talk Radio, 27 March 2022
Brexit trade deals may not deliver any ‘actual economic benefits’, MPs warn, The Independent, 18 March 2022
Russia dealt another ‘crushing blow’ from G7 tariffs, says Joe Biden, The Telegraph, 14 March 2022
Ukraine crisis: China walks ‘diplomatic tightrope’, but impact of sanctions on Russia seen as ‘limited’ for bilateral trade, South China Morning Post, 25 February 2022
Developing | Ukraine-Russia conflict, South China Morning Post, 25 February 2022
Rise in UK-Brazil trade threatens to speed up destruction of Amazon rainforest and other precious ecosystems, Sustain, 23 February 2022
Presidents’ Day – what does the future hold for the ‘special’ relationship?, Business Leader, 18 February 2022
Two new ‘green’ freeports to be created in Scotland, but likely benefits scrutinised, Edie, 14 February 2022
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Le Royaume-Uni enregistre une baisse de ses exportations vers l’Union européenne, Les Echos, 13 February 2022
Pig culls and fertiliser shortages mean higher prices for British shoppers, The Independent, 13 February 2022
UK exports to EU fell by £20bn last year, new ONS data shows, The Guardian, 11 February 2022
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Brexit costs UK business as much as Covid – report, Fashion Network, 26 January 2022
Trump-era export tariffs are still rattling British steelmakers, Marketplace, 19 January 2022
Liam Fox’s job hunt cost taxpayer £62,000, The Times, 17 January 2022
How to shift the gloomy narrative around Brexit, Financial Times, 13 January 2022
Bloomberg Westminster: Not Just Another Brexit Special, Bloomberg, 7 January 2022
Happy now? How a year outside the EU’s legal and trading arrangements has changed Britain, The Economist, 1 January 2022
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Biden fires ‘warning shot’ at UK over Brexit as tensions boil – ‘not interested’, The Express, 18 December 2021
A Transatlantic Conversation on Post-Pandemic Global Trade, Plastics Industry Association, 15 December 2021
Closest allies, but why does a UK-US trade deal seem elusive?, South China Morning Post, 10 December 2021
UK ‘taking risks’ in haste to agree new trade deals, audit finds, Global Trade Review, 8 December 2021
Small food businesses unprepared for next stage of Brexit controls, experts warn, The Grocer, 8 December 2021
Express vastly overstates impact of UK trade deals, Full Fact, 3 December 2021
Zoom opened the door for a revolution in the sale of British services overseas, The Times, 23 November 2021
Prince Charles pauses shipping of Christmas hampers to the EU amid Brexit changes, Metro, 16 November 2021
Did Brexit Work for Business? Dispatches, Channel 4, 15 November 2021
UK-EU trade agreement has ‘caused £44bn hit to trade’, Global Trade Review, 15 November 2021
Small exporters are shifting operations out of UK due to Brexit, survey suggests, The i, 15 November 2021
Brexit: Tariffs paid on £9.5bn of UK exports to EU despite Boris Johnson’s claim of ‘tariff-free’ deal, Independent, 15 November 2021
Running a shop after Brexit: how taxing could it be? The Times, 14 November 2021
Low taxes and levelling up: the great freeport experiment comes to Teesside, The Observer, 14 November 2021
UK refuses to join trade pact to end fossil fuel subsidies, eliminate tariffs on green goods, Politico, 11 November 2021
UK’s Brexit losses more than 178 times bigger than trade deal gains, The Independent, 7 November 2021
Les fruits amers du divorce, La Liberté, 6 November 2021
‘Why did you sign it?’ Questions raised about Britain’s sign-off on NI protocol, GB News, 10 October 2021
Boris Johnson’s Brexit choices are making Britain’s fuel and food shortages worse, CNN, 29 September 2021
Most Favoured Nation: In Liz We Truss?, Most Favoured Nation, 17 September 2021
Crossing the pond: Where is the growth? Relocate Magazine, 16 September 2021
For Northern Ireland, Brexit means red tape and subsidies, The Economist, 3 September 2021
UK-New Zealand trade deal close but will only have a ‘minuscule’ impact in British shops, experts say, The i, 31 August 2021
Brexit Britain wants to liberalise trade with poor countries, The Economist, 14 August 2021
Business chief calls on PM to save north-east from Brexit damage, The Guardian, 9 August 2021
‘Each makes the other more difficult to recover from’: University of Sussex professor L. Alan Winters speaks to Wikinews on trade, COVID-19, Brexit, Wikinews, 30 June 2021
Australia to enjoy exports boost six times greater than UK from trade deal, experts say, The Independent, 22 June 2021
So geht es der Wirtschaft fünf Jahre nach dem Brexit-Votum, Der Spiegel, 22 June 2021
European retailers still tied up in post-Brexit red tape, The Telegraph, 21 June 2021
Trade policies negotiated without proper scrutiny have big implications for Britain, The Times, 19 June 2021
Brexit faces problems at the Northern Irish border, The Economist, 17 June 2021
UK-Australia trade deal: New work visa proposals for Brits’ explained, and why it might be smoke and mirrors, The i, 17 June 2021
Tariffs axed immediately on Australian beef and lamb, triggering fears that farmers will be sent ‘to the wall’, Independent, 16 June 2021
Australia will benefit more from UK trade deal says expert, ABC News, 16 June 2021
Britain Signs Its First Major Post-Brexit Trade Deal With Australia, New York Times, 15 June 2021
The UK’s big GMO food plan might not be that big, Wired, 14 June 2021
G7 summit 2021: Boris Johnson says he will do ‘whatever it takes’ to protect territorial integrity of UK after NI spat, The Times, 13 June 2021
A carbon tax on imports is the wrong way to level up world trade, The Times, 10 June 2021
Warning over lower pesticide standards as UK eyes Pacific free trade deal, ThisisMoney, 9 June 2021
Liz Truss is wrong to paint Australian trade concerns as SNP grievance, The National, 7 June 2021
UK looks to seal Australia trade deal after G7, Financial Times, 2 June 2021
A tenth of British exports to the EU have faced tariffs since the start of 2021, new research finds, Institute of Export & International Trade, 1 June 2021
British exports worth billions have faced EU tariffs since Brexit, BBC News, 28 May 2021
UK seeks ambitious trade deal to prise open protectionist Indian economy, The Telegraph, 25 May 2021
Times letters: Proposed tariff-free Australian trade deal, The Times, 21 May 2021
U.K. Goods Trade Crawls Back Amid Brexit Slump, Pandemic Turmoil, Bloomberg, 12 May 2021
UK’s services sector starts to count the real cost of Brexit, Financial Times, 10 May 2021
Brexit: European Parliament backs UK trade deal, BBC News, 28 April 2021
Joe Biden ‘more interested’ in joining CPTPP than trade deal with Brexit Britain, The Express, 27 April 2021
Britânicos seguem empacados nos problemas do Brexit, Veja, 23 April 2021
Freeports aren’t about ‘levelling up’ – they’re a cover for tax cuts and deregulation, iNews, 22 April 2021
Brexit: UK-EU level playing field provisions ‘the most extensive’ of any trade agreement, Yahoo Finance, 22 April 2021
Long read: The beginner’s guide to freeports, Public Finance, 22 April 2021
Trade benefits of UK freeports “limited”, says parliamentary committee, Global Trade Review, 20 April 2021
UK MPs and business figures seek to improve Brexit trade deal, Financial Times, 12 April 2021
Newport seeking freeport status, Business Live, 12 April 2021
100 Days later, Brexit isn’t working and business wants it fixed, Erie News Now, 12 April 2021
Verschärfte Kontrollen nach Brexit verschoben, ORF TV, 6 April 2021
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The UK’s independent trade strategy: US, Asia, or the EU? Trade Finance Global, 16 March 2021
Freeports will open up another gap in Britain’s already over-stretched defences against economic crime, Politics Home, 10 March 2021
Freeports, BBC Politics South, 7 March 2021 (starts approx. 7 mins)
Rishi Sunak’s plans for Darlington and Teesside, The Economist, 6 March 2021
Peter Holmes on Freeports, BBC Radio Cornwall, 3 March 2021 (starts approx. 47:40)
Interview with Peter Holmes about Freeports, Times Radio, 2 March 2021 (starts approx. 01:35:35)
A freeport for Poole: Free trade or free ride? West Country Bylines, 2 March 2021
Britain’s climate dilemma as it navigates post-Brexit trade, Politico, 28 February 2021
“Game changing” plans to bring a freeport to Teesside submitted to government, ITV news, 8 February 2021
Peter Holmes on Freeports, Breakfast on BBC Radio Gloucestershire, 5 February 2021 (starts approx. 2:24:16)
Rishi Sunak’s free ports are no silver bullet for our economy, Labour List, 4 February 2021
Dog food manufacturers among few to benefit from freeports, claims Labour, The Mirror, 3 February 2021
Why Britain wants to join a Pacific trade deal, The Telegraph, 1 February 2021
UK to apply for TPP membership Monday for ‘bridge’ to Asia, Nikkei Asia, 31 January 2021
UK-EU trade tariffs after Brexit: what businesses need to know, The Telegraph, 31 January 2021
5 things to expect from Joe Biden on UK trade, Politico, 20 January 2021
‘Big loss’ for Britain as EU trade deal exposes some UK cars to tariffs, Yahoo! Finance, 20 January 2021
The idea of buccaneering Britain was appealing but the reality is different, The Times, 19 January 2021
EU invited to join CPTPP as rug pulled from under Boris Johnson’s Brexit dream, The Express, 14 January 2021
Brexit uncertainty halts animal feed supplies, Farmers Weekly, 13 January 2021
Joe Biden pressured by allies to ‘get trade deal with EU before UK’ amid Brexit row, The Express, 13 January 2021
Trade preferences need predictability, Vox EU, 11 January 2021
US Ambassador says Britain will win post-Brexit ‘prizes’ – hints ‘major’ US-UK trade deal, The Express, 6 January 2021
How FDI responds to non-trade provisions in preferential trade agreements, Vox EU, 5 January 2021
The joint effect of private and public environmental regulation on emissions, Vox EU, 3 January 2021
Will London lose its clout? BFM, 31 December 2020
Journal 20h00, France 2, 25 December 2020 (starts approx. 15:55)
EU ‘fearing NEW rival trade bloc with Britain, US and Australia’, The Express, 17 December 2020
UK exports lag behind rivals amid Brexit and Covid uncertainty, Financial Times, 16 December 2020
Brexit deadlock between UK and EU ‘very strange’ – Boris ‘not telling us something’, The Express, 15 December 2020
Call You & Yours – How ready are you for Brexit?, BBC Radio 4, 15 December 2020
Boris Johnson crushed as 2021 deadline for US-UK trade deal ‘will NOT be met’, The Express, 11 December 2020
Cost of living gains from Brexit trade deals illusory, say experts, The Independent, 9 December 2020
Brexit fishing fury as Nicola Sturgeon ‘set to take away UK waters after Indyref2’, The Express, 9 December 2020
Times letters: the search for a deal in Brexit trade talks, The Times, 9 December 2020
The year of coronavirus has helped China close the gap on America, The Times, 5 December 2020
Boris Johnson set to secure critical agreement with Switzerland as EU talks on brink, The Express, 3 December 2020
Switzerland strikes post-Brexit business travel deal, The Telegraph, 3 December 2020
Podcast | What’s going on with Brexit? Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2 December 2020
Is the UK’s trade deal with Japan better than the EU’s? Full Fact, 30 November 2020
The Food Programme: What’s the deal with “chlorinated chicken”? BBC Radio 4, 23 November 2020
Will Freeports turbo charge the economy? Breakfast on BBC Radio Cumbria, 18 November 2020 (start approx. 2:07:19)
Freeports are economically trivial and politically expensive, Financial Times, 19 November 2020
Ghana loses faith on UK trade deal, The Telegraph, 15 November 2020
Brexit: UK firms face £80bn trade hit due to government failure to roll over EU deals, The Independent, 13 November 2020
Cost of living gains from Brexit trade deals illusory, say experts, The Independent, 11 November 2020
The freeport con, New Statesman, 10 November 2020
Brexit: Liz Truss secures tariff wins with her Japan trade deal – for products UK doesn’t export, The Independent, 8 November 2020
Searching for value in the Japan–UK trade agreement, East Asia Forum, 3 November 2020
The Japan-UK Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) – Running To Stand Still Or Stepping Stone? Trade Knowledge Exchange, 27 October 2020
Britain and Japan sign post-Brexit trade deal, BBC News, 23 October 2020
Cheese seals the deal as UK and Japan sign ‘historic’ trade pact, Politico, 23 October 2020
UK Conservatives ponder global trade reboot, Politico, 22 October 2020
Farming Today: WTO trade rules, feathers for insulation, migrating wild birds and record breaking sheepdogs, BBC Radio 4, 20 October 2020 (starts approx. 07:20)
Hope for low-standard import ban boosted as expert claims it would be WTO compliant, Farmers Guardian, 18 October 2020
Covid 19 highlights need to update pharma supply chains, Chemistry World, 15 October 2020
Brexit will harm trade with the poorest countries, research shows, devex, 14 October 2020
Brexit: Expert reveals chances of getting a deal, Daily Express, 30 September 2020
Quest for trade deals takes Britain into turbulent seas, The Telegraph, 22 September 2020
Angela Merkel issues subtle message to UK with latest no deal warning – ‘Prepare and plan’, The Daily Express, 19 September 2020
Boris Johnson reassured Brexit U-turn to have no ‘long-lasting’ impact on UK reputation, The Daily Express, 13 September 2020
Britain is risking a car-crash Brexit of food shortages, another recession and isolation, CNN Business, 12 September 2020
Badgers, Brexit and a deal for dairy, Farmers Weekly Podcast, 11 September 2020 (starts approx. 2:50)
5 things to know about the UK-Japan trade deal, Politico, 11 September 2020
Britain clinches first major trade deal since leaving the EU, CNN Business, 11 September 2020
Westminster Hour – Freeports, BBC Radio 4, 6 September 2020 (starts approx. 45:00)
Brexit breakthrough: UK set to finalise new trade deal with Japan as soon as NEXT WEEK, The Daily Express, 5 September 2020
Government’s post-Brexit ‘freeport’ scheme tipped to make ‘no material effect’ on UK economy, The New European, 3 August 2020
Rishi Sunak’s freeports plan could hand vital boost to critical UK sector after Brexit, The Express, 3 August 2020
Freeport advantages for business are ‘almost non-existent’, Financial Times, 2 August 2020
Mini Cooper Drivers May Face Mighty Shock of New Brexit Rules, Bloomberg, 30 July 2020
Johnson accused of post-Brexit attack on devolution, Channel 4 News, 22 July 2020
POLITICO Pro Morning Trade UK, Politico, 17 July 2020
Freeports plan will have ‘negligible’ benefit to UK economy, trade experts warn, The Independent, 15 July 2020
Business and politicians wary of UK plan for low-tax trade zones, Financial Times, 12 July 2020
U.K.’s Global Trade Deals Still Pose a Huge Pre-Brexit Challenge, Yahoo! Finance, 7 July 2020
Brexit: Cars produced in Japan to be stamped ‘Made in Britain’ under Boris Johnson’s plans, The Independent, 3 July 2020
DIT to review its trade modelling to strengthen the UK’s hand in future deal negotiations, Institute of Export & International Trade, 2 July 2020
Quel avenir pour les relations commerciales entre le Royaume-Uni et la Chine? CGTN Francais, 27 June 2020
Brexit trade talks: Clock ticking on promise of global Britain, The Times, 15 June 2020
Boris Johnson faces losing billions if he bans Huawei in the UK, The Telegraph, 13 June 2020
Food standards and gin, Farmers Weekly Podcast, 12 June 2020 (starts approx. 03:50)
Brexit: UK borders still not ready for leaving single market at end of year, MPs told, The Independent, 10 June 2020
A new trade bargain can secure the supplies we need to fight next wave, The Telegraph, 10 June 2020
The UK and EU are facing the most extreme version of Brexit, Financial Times, 7 June 2020
Brexit: Businesses told to expect more bureaucracy and additional costs from January, Irish Times, 5 June 2020
No-deal Brexit holds fewer fears for a Covid-ravaged economy, Financial Times, 4 June 2020
No-Deal Brexit Threat Looms Over Pandemic-Ravaged U.K., Bloomberg, 2 June 2020
Coronavirus and Brexit are a poisonous combination for UK business, Financial Times, 2 June 2020
Nuts, bolts and bay leaves: UK trade after Brexit, Financial Times, 22 May 2020
London soll zum Singapur an der Themse werden, Wirtschafts Woche, 10 May 2020
Britain walks a tightrope in opening trade talks with China, The Telegraph, 5 May 2020
Globalization is Down but Not Out Yet, Wall Street Journal, 28 April 2020
PPE hoarding and lessons from the 2007 food crisis, Financial Times, 27 April 2020
‘Global Britain’ dream threatened by virus nightmare, The Telegraph, 5 April 2020
Coronavirus: Lack of workers ‘could create food shortages’, Brighton Argus, 30 March 2020
The battle to keep supply chains rolling, Financial Times, 26 March 2020
British economy ‘to grow 0.16% at best under US trade deal, The Guardian, 2 March 2020
Inside Business – UK – EU Trade, BBC Sounds, 29 February 2020
UK., EU Gear Up for Thorny Post-Brexit Negotiations, Wall Street Journal, 27 February 2020
Boris Johnson’s Freeport Idea Is Full of Holes, Yahoo! Finance, 26 February 2020
Brexit Britain’s freeport utopia isn’t about free trade, or ports, Wired, 25 February 2020
Sunak gets ready to do a reverse Osborne, The Sunday Times, 23 February 2020
Brexit: How do you negotiate a trade agreement?, BBC News, 21 February 2020
BBC Politics South East – Free Ports Boost or Bust? BBC One South East, 17 February 2020 (starts approx. 21:05)
Brexit: Ministers refuse to release secret studies believed to show little gain from trade deals with US and Asia, The Independent, 15 February 2020
How would free ports work in the UK? The Times, 10 February 2020
EU clamps down on free ports over crime and terrorism links, The Guardian, 10 February 2020
UK faces long road in ‘ambitious’ post-Brexit trade push into Asia, Nikkei Asian Review, 6 February 2020
Where a Brexit Trade Deal Matters Most to Boris Johnson, Bloomberg, 4 February 2020
Brexit and Fishing Rights, BBC Politics South East, 2 February 2020 (starts approx. 9 mins)
Post-Brexit Britain may find trade deals hard to negotiate, The Economist, 1 February 2020
Brexit is here. What’s next for fashion?, Vogue Business, 31 January 2020
Interview: Checks in Irish Sea might make Northern Ireland “unattractive” for trade, Xinhua News, 30 January 2020
What is a free port?, Port Technology, 30 January 2020
UK to outpace Europe in trade growth this year, US seen as top market for SMEs, Global Trade Review, 22 January 2020
Britain languishes behind EU in battle for African trade, Financial Times, 20 January 2020
Boris Johnson’s £60bn services deal dilemma, Financial Times, 13 January 2020
Government free port plans are pointless says Sussex expert, The Argus, 3 January 2020
Can new free trade deals compensate for the loss of frictionless trade with the EU? BBC Newsnight, 11 December 2019 (starts approx. 5:30)
Brexit: Free trade deals ‘won’t offset leaving EU’, BBC News, 11 December 2019
Boris Johnson misleading public over impact of his ‘unlawful’ Brexit deal, trade experts warn, The Independent, 10 December 2019
Study says US trade deal is risk to Union, The Times, 10 December 2019
Boris Johnson under scrutiny over Irish Sea border claims, Financial Times, 9 December 2019
NHS data is a goldmine. It must be saved from big tech, The Guardian, 9 December 2019
US could get access to UK health data, experts warn, The BMJ, 7 December 2019
The truth about whether Boris Johnson is misleading voters over his Brexit deal, The Independent, 6 December 2019
Unrealistic election pledges will leave the UK disappointed, Financial Times, 5 December 2019
Professor L. Alan Winters on the Brexit timelines of the Conservatives and Labour, BBC News at 10, 4 December 2019 (starts approx. 22 mins)
US tech firms want access to £10bn NHS health data, The Times, 2 December 2019
Tories claim Brexit deal would not mean Irish sea admin – but expert says that’s wrong, News Letter, 28 November 2019
Boris Johnson’s ‘arbitrary’ Brexit deadline will damage UK economy, say trade experts, The Telegraph, 27 November 2019
‘That’s completely wrong’: Michael Gove falsely claims EU has no single market for services, The Independent, 26 November 2019
Brexit: Tariffs on 60% of goods entering NI from GB, BBC News, 16 November 2019
Brexit ‘could mean border checks between England, Scotland and Wales’, The Independent, 5 November 2019
Post-Brexit trade with Northern Ireland may survive systemic abuse, Financial Times, 31 October 2019
What does Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal mean for UK business? The Telegraph, 17 October 2019
This deal doesn’t get Brexit done – it’s just the end of the beginning, The Telegraph, 17 October 2019
Prof L. Alan Winters on the Prime Minister’s proposal for Northern Ireland, talkRADIO, 6 October 2019 (starts approx. 11:33am)
What one day’s imports and exports tell us about Britain’s trade with the world, iNews, 29 September 2019
Brexit threatens food regulations, The Ecologist, 11 September 2019
Govt has ‘clear path’ to water down food regulation, experts warn, Farming UK, 11 September 2018
Would free ports help a post-Brexit Britain? Raconteur, 9 September 2019
How the devaluation of the pound has affected British business – for better and for worse, The Telegraph, 8 September 2019
The EU has signed trade deals covering half a billion civilians since Brexit, The London Economic, 26 August 2019
Germany Has Told Britain Its Food Producers Might Not Bother Exporting To It After A No-Deal Brexit, Buzzfeed, 22 August 2019
Brexit has chilling effect on UK inward investment, Financial Times, 21 August 2019
Lidl lines up suppliers to cover no-deal costs, BBC News, 18 August 2019
Nearly 1,000 jobs are on the line in Inverclyde if there is a ‘no-deal’ Brexit, Greenock Telegraph, 16 August 2019
‘No deal’ could cost 1,100 West Fife jobs says MP, Dunfermline Press, 15 August 2019
How a no-deal Brexit threatens your weekly food shop, The Guardian, 13 August 2019
As the U.S.-China trade war rages, an even bigger battle with Europe is brewing, Marketplace, 12 August 2019
What free ports can and can’t achieve, The Economist, 8 August 2019
As UK accelerates post-Brexit freeport plans, Truss takes lessons from U.S., Reuters, 8 August 2019
The UK food industry wants a pause in antitrust law to tackle Brexit food shortages, CNBC, 7 August 2019
Good Morning Scotland – UK-US Trade Deal, BBC Radio Scotland, (starts approx. 2:09:30), 6 August 2019
UK hopes for quick US trade deal are pie in Brexit sky, The Irish Times, 2 August 2019
UK plans to create up to 10 freeports to boost post-Brexit trade, Reuters, 1 August 2019
From ‘Blade Runner’ to Brexit in England’s industrial north, Politico, 1 August 2019
The Today Programme – Post-Brexit Free Ports, BBC Radio 4, (starts approx. 49mins) 1 August 2019
Good Morning Scotland – No deal and the backstop, BBC Radio Scotland, (starts approx. 1hr 40mins), 30 July 2019
Deadlock on Brexit may mean economy is already in recession, top forecaster warns, The Telegraph, 22 July 2019
UKTPO Report Outlines Trade Winners & Losers, Bloomberg, 18 July 2019
No-deal Brexit will cost £22bn a year to compensate businesses, landmark analysis reveals, The Independent, 14 July 2019
Brexit will decimate UK services exports – but remarkably clueless politicians would rather remain silent, The Independent, 8 July 2019
Will Boris Johnson’s free-trade zones actually boost the economy post-Brexit?, The Independent, 7 July 2019
What is a free port? All you need to know about the free-trade zones, The Guardian, 6 July 2019
Experts sceptical on Johnson’s plans for regional freeports, Financial Times, 5 July 2019
What are ‘free ports’ and would they boost post-Brexit trade?, The Week, 2 July 2019
An economist’s view on key Brexit claims, The Times, 26 June 2019
UK accused of ‘silently eroding’ EU pesticide rules in Brexit laws, The Guardian, 12 June 2019
Interview: U.S.-UK trade deal unlikely to happen in foreseeable future: expert, Xinhua News, 11 June 2019
South Korea agrees deal with UK for post-Brexit trade, Financial Times, 10 June 2019
Brexit uncertainty drives investment boost for other EU countries, Financial Times, 10 June 2019
Experts are sceptical about a UK-US trade deal amid Brexit and China uncertainty, The National, 6 June 2019
Would a trade deal with Trump boost Brexit Britain? Financial Times, 4 June 2019
UK hopes trade deal with US could soften Brexit blow, Deutsche Welle, 4 June 2019
The maths of a trade deal with Trump do not add up, The Telegraph, 3 June 2019
Turkey shows Britain that a customs union can hurt, Politico, 16 May 2019
Researchers fear ‘watered down’ UK pesticide legislation, Farming UK, 15 May 2019
The future of Britain’s automotive industry, Prospect Magazine, 14 May 2019
How is Brexit affecting FDI into Britain? The Economist, 9 May 2019
BREXIT BOMBSHELL: Brussels now MORE committed to EU exit than UK – claims lawyer, The Express, 4 May 2019
Why May’s and Corbyn’s Brexit plans could harm UK cities, Yahoo! Finance, 22 April 2019
We must not compromise on our free market after Brexit divorce, The Telegraph, 7 April 2019
May’s deal has sacrificed services as price of ending free movement, The Times, 4 April 2019
May-Corbyn customs union is constitutional nonsense and a total victory for Brussels, The Telegraph, 3 April 2019
What is the trade advantage of being in a customs union with the EU? BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, 2 April 2019 (Starts 23.26)
Are the new trade deals quite what they seem? Newsnight, 28 March 2019 (starts 25.30)
Brexit: Rolled-over UK free trade deals ‘are incomplete’, BBC News, 28 March 2019
EU warns no-deal Brexit is ‘increasingly likely’, Financial Times, 25 March 2019
No-deal Brexit ‘to send exports tumbling by 20%’, says Sussex University’s UK Trade Policy Observatory, The Sunday Times, 24 March 2019
Uncle Sam’s trade deals are a game of chicken, The Sunday Times, 17 March 2019
Promises of new trade freedoms after Brexit are unlikely to be met, The Times, 16 March 2019
Most imports tariff-free under no-deal plan, BBC News, 13 March 2019
U.K. puts forward trade plans for no-deal Brexit, Global News, 13 March 2019
Britain’s trade gap widens as exports to EU fall, City A.M., 12 March 2019
Slashing Tariffs Won’t Redeem a No-Deal Brexit, Bloomberg, 9 March 2019
No-deal Brexit would take back control and hand it to Trump, experts say, The Independent, 6 March 2019
EU and U.S. officials meet to talk trade, Marketplace Podcast, 5 March 2019
How would a no-deal Brexit affect the UK economy? Financial Times, 4 March 2019
What could happen to food prices after Brexit? BBC News, 1 March 2019
How Brexit Could Damage Asian And African Economies, Global Finance, 1 March 2019
Free ports would deliver ‘limited’ economic boost to Grimsby, say economists, Grimsby Telegraph, 1 March 2019
After a no-deal Brexit, should Britain abolish all tariffs? The Economist, 28 February 2019
Honda, Brexit and the collapse of Japan’s love affair with the UK, Wired, 24 February 2019
‘Taking back control’ of UK agriculture clearly includes the right to be stupid, Financial Times, 21 February 2019
Honda to Shut Plant in Brexit-Shaken Britain, The New York Times, 19 February 2019
Honda’s U.K. plant closure adds to rising Brexit worries, CBS News, 19 February 2019
Honda to Shut Plant in Brexit-Shaken Britain, The Washington Post, 19 February 2019
Honda’s announcement that it will close its Swindon plant in 2021, BBC Radio Ulster (starts at 52.50 mins) 19 February 2019
Honda’s announcement that it will close its Swindon plant in 2021, BBC Radio Foyle (starts at 1hr 48) 19 February 2019
Brexit: What trade deals has the UK done so far?, BBC News, 14 February 2019
Brexit: This is how many people could lose their jobs in each area of Coventry and Warwickshire, Coventry Telegraph, 13 February 2019
What are WTO terms and how will they affect the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit? ITV news, 11 February 2019
Stephen Morgan: Getting Brexit right for Portsmouth International Port is vital, The House, 5 February 2019
How can the UK continue trading on current terms with third countries covered by EU trade deals? The Independent, 3 February 2019
What are World Trade Organisation terms and what exactly do they mean? The Independent, 29 January 2019
Brexit: How many trade deals has the UK done? BBC News, 25 January 2019
It’s a Cruel World for U.K. Companies Weighing No-Deal Brexit, Bloomberg, 25 January 2019
How badly could Brexit disrupt agricultural exports from Northern Ireland? The Independent, 22 January 2019
Dani Garavelli: Like a mob ready to take to the streets if thwarted, The Scotsman, 19 January 2019
How to run a new Brexit referendum and disappoint everyone, The Economist, 16 January 2019
Britons Most at Risk in a Messy Split From EU Are Least Worried, The Wall Street Journal, 13 January 2019
Charlotte Humma December 15th, 2016
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In addition to our Briefing Paper and blog series, the Observatory also produces various other written materials as categorised below.
WTO: Challenges and Opportunities
This House of Commons Library research briefing by Ana Soares discusses the WTO’s role in a context of geopolitical tensions and global economic shifts. It also looks at efforts to overcome current challenges.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a multilateral organisation where countries meet to agree on trade rules, review trade policies, and settle trade disputes. The WTO is the main institution regulating international trade with the aim of certainty and stability in trade relations and the promotion of its members economic growth and development.
In February 2024, ministers representing all WTO members will come together at the 13th WTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi to take stock of recent negotiations and discussions. Ministers will make decisions that may create new rules and steer WTO activities. The agenda includes WTO reform, fisheries subsidies, and agriculture.
Illustrating the legacy of Brexit, this timely Research Handbook provides a comprehensive and coherent analysis of not only the Brexit process within the UK but also what it means for both the UK and the EU within the framework of their future relationship. Bringing together contributions from leading scholars in the field, this Research Handbook considers the ways in which the legal, economic and political uncertainty brought about by Brexit through the upheaval of established norms and values will continue to reverberate for the remainder of the 2020s and beyond. The UKTPO contributes to the handbook with a chapter on ‘Not so frictionless after all: trade in goods and services in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement’. Authors include Yohannes Ayele, Ingo Borchert, Michael Gasiorek, Peter Holmes, Anna Jerzewska, Minako Morita-Jaeger and Suzannah Walmsley.
Find out more here
In this Special Report, Sam Lowe and George Riddell identify the trade tools the UK government could use to support its green ambitions in its independent trade policy. The report focuses of four key areas; international trade negotiations and cooperation; unilateral actions; decarbonising and greening international trade and supply chains; and Government incentives to support a green trade strategy. The authors set out a toolbox of the trade and regulatory policy areas that the UK should be engaging with and utilising in the development of its green trade strategy. However, they also argue that the UK cannot achieve its stated aim to be a global leader on green trade without cooperation of the entire UK Government as well as trading partners, international organisations, businesses, consumer groups and civil society.
This eBook, edited and introduced by Ingo Borchert and L. Alan Winters, assesses the growing challenges of digitisation and discusses trade policy options to tackle them. It brings together key insights from experts around the world on new directions for digital trade policy, including concrete steps to recognise and evaluate barriers to digital trade, as well as strategic guidance on instruments and approaches to tackle current and future impediments.
The eBook presents the proceedings of a conference organised the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the UK Trade Policy Observatory, and hosted by CEPR, which contribute towards a clearer overview of the challenges and opportunities facing digital trade policy-making in the future.
Read the eBook | Read the VoxEU Column | Listen to the VoxTalk
This paper looks at what the UK’s approach to tariffs will mean for developing countries’ access to the UK market, and whether the government will achieve its pledge to improve access post-Brexit. It includes a rapid assessment of the structure and the functioning of the future UK Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), in so far as it has currently been announced, and considers, in particular, how the newly announced UK Global Tariff will impinge on developing countries. In addition, it evaluates the loss in market access for Ghana and Kenya if they and the UK fail to rollover their existing EU Economic Partnership Agreements or Market Access Regulation provisions.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) commissioned the UK Trade Policy Observatory and the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy, with help from Vital Economics, to write a report on Trade policies and emissions reduction: establishing and assessing options. The report will help the CCC develop its guidance to the UK Government on how to address the trade elements of its climate policy. It focuses on whether the UK should introduce border carbon adjustments (BCA) – which price the emissions embodied in imported products – and product standards, which require that imported products fall below specific embodied emissions thresholds. Both aim to extend domestic climate regulatory requirements to imported products. The UK currently applies neither but is considering the introduction of both, while the EU has recently decided to do so, in the form of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.
Read: Reducing UK emissions: 2020 Progress Report to Parliament
This report from PAN UK, Sustain and Dr Emily Lydgate of UKTPO compares current UK pesticide protections with that of two countries slated as major priorities for post-Brexit Free Trade Agreements – US and Australia – and a third country, India. The report focuses on how trade deals with these countries threaten to weaken UK pesticide standards. It also looks at ways in which these deals could increase pesticide-related harms to UK citizens, wildlife and the natural environment.
Read: Toxic Trade: How trade deals threaten to weaken UK pesticide standards
With the UK set to embark on a new era of global trade negotiations for the first time in living memory, this report highlights what small businesses need in order to take advantage of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The report was commissioned by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).
Based on a comprehensive review of recent major trade agreements, the report identifies best practice for provisions in FTAs that will help small businesses participate in international trade. Future FTAs should reduce or eliminate non-tariff measures that de jure or de facto impose fixed costs, such as procedures for registering intellectual property or accessing trusted trader regimes. Such requirements are more difficult to meet for smaller businesses. Future FTAs should also feature a SME Committee, including private sector representation, that has a meaningful say in all matters affecting SMEs including e-commerce and the protection of intellectual property rights. The report also discusses best practice for information exchange, e.g. a dedicated SME Helpdesk.
Read: The Representation of SME Interests in Free Trade Agreements: Recommendations for Best Practice
Commissioned by the Welsh Government, this report identifies issues that may impinge directly or indirectly on the Welsh economy as a result of the adoption of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland as part of the Withdrawal Agreement and subsequent Bill.
Read: The Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: The implications for Wales’ external trade
Changing Lanes examines the impact two “no deal” Brexit scenarios – reverting to WTO ‘most-favoured nation’ (MFN) or unilaterally reducing all tariffs to zero – on prices and living standards.
The report finds that the average annual household spend would rise by £260, and that over three million families would experience price rises of over £500 a year. In addition, the research shows that poorer households would be most affected by a ‘no-deal’ scenario in which tariffs and prices rose.
See also: Changing Lanes Appendix
Our Briefing Papers provide a unique analysis of various elements of trade policy in the post-Brexit era. In reverse chronological order:
April 2024 – Author: Sunayana Sasmal
In this Briefing Paper, Sunayana Sasmal analyses the contribution of multilateral trade rules and recent strategic partnerships, and stresses the importance of moving away from recent fragmented approaches, in favour of enhanced multilateral cooperation.
Read Briefing Paper 79: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS, THE WTO AND ‘STRATEGIC’ PARTNERSHIPS.
In this Briefing Paper, Ana Peres analyses the latest WTO Ministerial Conference (MC13) outcomes and discusses why the WTO may need to rethink its identity.
Read Briefing Paper 78: REFLECTIONS ON MC13: THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF THE WTO.
In this Briefing Paper, Nicolò Tamberi analyses literature on international trade and economic growth and provides a quick guide for policymakers on trade and growth. Trade policy is not the only tool, or the main one, to address economic growth. However, it clearly has a role to play both directly and indirectly, because inappropriate trade policy can render other growth-focused policies less effective.
Read Briefing Paper 77: TRADE AND GROWTH.
In this Briefing Paper, Erika Szyszczak, UKTPO Fellow and Professor Emerita of Law at the University of Sussex, offers an in-depth analysis of the Open Strategic Autonomy (OSA) policy. The EU continues to argue for multilateralism and a rules-based international order yet the effect of many of these measures could infringe international law and weaken the already perilous international legal order
Read Briefing Paper 76: OPEN STRATEGIC AUTONOMY AS EU TRADE POLICY.
In this Briefing Paper, its authors consider the potential economic opportunities for the UK arising from the current CPTPP in comparison with the likelihood of further expansion in the future. They evaluate the UK’s economic opportunities with both current and potential CPTPP members, including trade in goods, trade in services, supply chain relationships and rules of origin. They also compare the CPTPP’s policies, with those of current and potential CPTPP members and explain why the UK Government should develop and articulate a strategic plan based on the political reality surrounding the CPTPP.
Read Briefing Paper 75: JOINING THE CPTPP: ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES AND POLITICAL DILEMMAS OF FUTURE EXPANSIONS FOR THE UK.
April 2023 – Authors: Mattia Di Ubaldo, Guillermo Larbalestier and Manuel Tong Koecklin
This year, the UK Government will replace its current preferential trading scheme for low and lower-middle income countries with the Developing Countries Trading Scheme (DCTS). This Briefing Paper looks at and evaluates two key changes in the DCTS: changes in the eligibility criteria for the Enhanced Preferences sub-scheme, and changes in the rules of origin to use preferences under the Comprehensive Preferences sub-scheme offered to Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Using a novel RoOs Restrictiveness Index, the authors find that the RoOs under the DCTS are, on average, less restrictive than those under the former scheme. They also conclude that most benefits are likely to be accrued by LDCs both in the short and long term due to more lenient rules of origin, extended cumulation rules, and being eligible for the Enhanced DCTS if they graduate from LDC status.
Read Briefing Paper 74: THE UK’S NEW (AND IMPROVED?) DEVELOPING COUNTRIES TRADING SCHEME
March 2023 – Authors: Sophie Clarke, Michael Gasiorek and Aldo Sandoval Hernandez
New analysis presented in our Briefing Paper, The challenges facing UK firms: Trade and supply chains reveals that UK businesses are struggling with increased costs, labour and skill issues and supply shortages following the UK’s departure from the European Union.
The authors of the Briefing Paper analysed over 2,800 responses to three surveys issued by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), to help produce a long-term perspective on the challenges facing UK businesses. They examine the main challenges and opportunities reported by businesses over 2021 and 2022 and two specific trade-related areas. The first is on the difficulties and advantages for businesses arising from the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). The second is on supply chain challenges. The results show that as a result of the TCA, UK businesses are reporting significant difficulties and disadvantages, including increased red tape, bureaucracy and costs as well as shipping and transport issues. Such increases inevitably lead to both shortages of products and rises in prices for the UK public.
Read Briefing Paper 73: THE CHALLENGES FACING UK FIRMS: TRADE AND SUPPLY CHAINS
December 2022 – Authors: Nicolò Tamberi and Manuel Tong Koecklin
This Briefing Paper compares the preference utilisation rates (PURs) of both the UK and EU imports under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. PURs tell us the amount of eligible imports that come in tariff-free (that is, preference eligible in a free trade agreement, the extent to which preferences are being used) and allow for the evaluation of the effectiveness of a trade agreement. We find that the utilisation of preferential tariffs differs between the EU and the UK. EU exporters are utilising preferences more than UK exporters and UK exporters tend to use preferences more where the value of trade is larger. The Paper analyses the distribution of PURs across products and composition issues to identify reasons for low utilisation rates.
Read Briefing Paper 72: PREFERENCE UTILISATION IN THE TCA: HOW ARE WE DOING?
November 2022 – Authors: Michael Gasiorek, Guillermo Larbalestier and Alasdair Smith
Policy discussions about the effects and opportunities of international trade recognise that some parts of the economy might be more sensitive than others to changes in trade and/or trade policy, but the concept of a sensitive industry has different meanings. In our Briefing Paper, Identifying sensitive and strategic sectors, we aim to provide a conceptual framework for considering the factors that could identify industries that may be sensitive or strategic from a trade perspective; to review the range of information that can identify these factors; and to illustrate the ways in which this information can be usefully applied.
Accompanying the Briefing Paper is a spreadsheet file with the underlying indicators and some tools of analysis which we hope will be of use and interest to some readers. The spreadsheet also includes detailed information about data sources and any data adjustments made.
Read Briefing Paper 71: IDENTIFYING SENSITIVE AND STRATEGIC SECTORS
October 2022 – Author: Erika Szyszczak
In this Briefing Paper, we look at the European Commission’s recently proposed unilateral measures for European Union trade security. Taken together, the Foreign Subsidies Regulation and the Anti-Coercion Instrument are aimed at enabling the Commission to counteract the distortive impact of ‘third country’ subsidies on EU business competitiveness; as well as to investigate and retaliate against the perceived use of economic coercion by foreign governments against the EU, its Member States and firms. While such policies may be primarily targeted at China, they would de facto apply to all third countries including Russia, the US, and the UK. While both measures would give the Commission wide discretion in their application, the Anti-Coercion Instrument would specifically allow it to bypass the World Trade Organization dispute settlement process and possible wider international law commitments. We conclude that with continuing geopolitical uncertainty for the rules-based global trade environment – compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine – the EU treads a careful line between the development of a specialist trade policy and a piecemeal approach in respect of the overarching restraints of Member States, international law commitments and other stakeholders’ fundamental rights.
Read Briefing Paper 70: Trade and Security: The EU’s Unilateral Approach to Economic Statecraft
September 2022 – Authors: Peter Holmes, Anna Jerzewska, Guillermo Larbalestier
In this paper we discuss how the customs and tax benefits central to the UK Freeports policy may undermine businesses’ export opportunities. Many of the UK’s Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) contain provisions explicitly denying preferential (duty-free) access to goods which contain imported materials on which UK customs duty was not paid (known as “duty drawback bans”). But, even in the absence of duty drawback bans, the preferential status of goods manufactured in Freeports is not guaranteed. There are other ways in which goods exported from Freeports might find themselves subject to penalties, such as anti-subsidy duties (whether under WTO or FTA rules), if partner countries consider that the regime in Freeports constitutes implicit subsidisation (e.g., via tax breaks). Lastly, we highlight the diverse experience of free ports and free zones around the world.
Read Briefing Paper 69: Exporting from UK Freeports: Duty Drawback, Origin and Subsidies
August 2022 – Authors: Camilla Jensen, Guillermo Larbalestier, Peter Holmes
In addition to the military support being given to Ukraine, efforts to halt any further Russian advancements continue to be focused on economic sanctions that aim to hamper Russia’s ability to finance the invasion. This Briefing Paper provides analysis of the pros, cons and effectiveness of current trade policy responses in terms of the short-term aim of cutting Russia’s oil rents and the long-term aim of creating a complete Energy Curtain between Russia and the West. We find that whilst current interventions may go some way in meeting the target of decoupling from Russian oil and gas, they may not be effective in the aim of impacting negatively on Russian revenues, and in the process serve to raise energy prices. While high prices on fossil fuels are beneficial for the green transition, this is only true when there are viable alternatives to fossil fuels available.
Read Briefing Paper 68: The Energy Curtain: All Eyes On Fossil Fuel Prices This Summer
April 2022 – Author: Michael Gasiorek
Despite the positive narrative around the growth in global supply chains, we currently see considerable discussion and growing concern over the issue of ‘supply chain resilience’. This Briefing Paper analyses the rationale behind greater supply chain resilience and sustainability and the policies being used to address vulnerability in certain supply chains. The author finds that policy responses do not always concern supply chain resilience and in many cases they may have been designed more to protect domestic producers. To negate the risk that supply chain resilience is used as a get-out clause for a wide range of industrial policy interventions. This Briefing Paper suggests a taxonomy for understanding different possible legitimate reasons for being concerned about supply chains and provides ten ways more international coordination could be achieved.
Read Briefing Paper 67: Supply Chain Resilience: The dangers of ‘pick n mix’
This Briefing Paper aims to further understanding of the importance of trade in services for the UK economy. In particular, to shed light on the relationship between services and manufacturing trade, including an increasingly significant form of services trade known as Mode 5. We explore input-output data, firm-level data and the links between services and manufacturing in the context of the UK’s independent trade policy. The authors provide evidence that shows that the nature of how these services interact with goods trade and the policy or market access barriers and their implications need to be understood in much greater detail for policy purposes.
Read Briefing Paper 66: Links between services and manufacturing trade in the UK: Mode 5 and beyond
December 2021 – Authors: Peter Holmes and Guillermo Larbalestier
In this Briefing Paper, the authors review the importance of the UK-US trade relationship and identify clear interests for closer economic cooperation. They discuss the main challenges for trade discussions and suggest that bilateral cooperation – primarily in ad hoc regulatory areas – has potential, but there is a lack of interest on the US side. Finally, they look at broader economic issues and systematic policy issues, such as climate change, and multilateral economic relations where the UK hopes to cooperate with the US.
Read Briefing Paper 65: DEEPENING AND MANAGING TRANSATLANTIC ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIPS
December 2021 – Authors: Camilla Jensen, Michael Gasiorek and Emily Lydgate
The idea of introducing a Border Carbon Adjustment has been raised by various countries and major trading partners of the UK, most notably the EU, with its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. This Briefing Paper seeks to address the possible implications of a border carbon adjustment mechanism for the UK. We examine the potential impact on specific industries and consider implications of cooperation with the EU on ETS schemes and BCAs, the pros and cons to the UK of applying such a new type of policy tool and for maintaining trade, investment and job stability in the UK, and with trading partners, and the extent to which it might counter the problem of carbon leakage.
Read Briefing Paper 64: UK POLICY ON CARBON LEAKAGE
November 2021 – Authors: Yohannes Ayele, Guillermo Larbalestier and Nicolo Tamberi
Since the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) came into force, firms trading with the EU have faced new costs as they learn to trade under new regulations and comply with customs formalities that were otherwise not present. In this Briefing Paper, we provide an analysis of UK monthly trade data to assess how UK goods trade has performed in the period January-July 2021. We also expand our analysis on preference utilization rates (PURs), which depict the extent to which UK exports to the EU have benefited from the tariff-free treatment agreed in the TCA as well as examining the impact of the TCA on trade in services in the first two quarters of 2021. Our analysis shows that the introduction of the TCA reduced trade between the UK and the EU, but this is not homogenous across sectors, although, whilst exports took a knock in January and have since recovered, the impact on imports has persisted. Furthermore, despite the zero-tariff, zero-quota trade agreement of the TCA, firms end up paying tariffs to avoid the bureaucratic costs of claiming zero tariff. The foregone duty saving amounts to £534.6 million.
Read Briefing Paper 63: POST-BREXIT: TRADE IN GOODS AND SERVICES (II)
October 2021 – Author: Anna Jerzewska
Leaving the EU has led to the creation of a new customs and regulatory border between the UK and the EU making it more difficult and more expensive to trade with the EU. However, the impact of Brexit on UK importers and exporters is not homogenous. This Briefing Paper identifies the factors and considerations that determine which companies are impacted, and thus why some might choose to cease to trade, while others experience no change in their trade with the EU. As more border formalities and checks are introduced, UK importers are yet to feel the full scale of the impact. As a result, issues are only going to become more widespread and deepen and new ways of responding and dealing with them are still to emerge.
Read Briefing Paper 62: THE IMPACT OF A NEW CUSTOMS AND REGULATORY BORDER WITH THE EU FOR UK COMPANIES TRADING GOODS
July 2021 – Author: Minako Morita-Jaeger
The UK’s accession negotiation to the Asia-Pacific Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade deal was formally launched in June. This Briefing Paper aims to examine the implications that joining the CPTPP would have for the UK’s regulatory strategy and what kind of impact it could have for future trade negotiations. To examine these issues, we look at the digital trade provisions in recent trade agreements between the UK and the EU, Japan and Australia.
Read Briefing Paper 61: ACCESSING CPTPP WITHOUT A NATIONAL DIGITAL REGULATORY STRATEGY? HARD POLICY CHALLENGES FOR THE UK
July 2021 – Authors: Emily Lydgate and Michael Gasiorek
The influence of trade agreements in shaping UK food safety and standards has become almost existential in defining the UK’s post-EU identity. Acceding to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is far from ideology-free: it symbolises the UK’s desire for regulatory independence from the EU and sets out a new post-Brexit direction. In this Briefing Paper, we look whether CPTPP accession seems likely to lower UK food standards and prevent the UK from agreeing to continued regulatory alignment with the EU. The answer is, not necessarily, if the UK Government communicates clearly and explicitly to CPTPP parties its intent to maintain its current regulatory approach, preferably through the use of so-called side letters.
Read Briefing Paper 60: CPTPP AND AGRI-FOOD REGULATION: CROSSING THE EU-EXIT RUBICON?
June 2021 – Authors: Ingo Borchert, Michael Gasiorek, Emily Lydgate, L. Alan Winters
International trade in a digital world is increasingly influenced by domestic regulation and is linked to non-trade areas such as health or climate change. This makes it difficult for the WTO’s consensus- and trade-focused structure to make swift progress. This Briefing Paper looks at how the G7 leadership across all four Trade Tracks could provide the necessary impetus for multilateral or open plurilateral solutions, in order to avert further fragmentation of the trading system.
Read Briefing Paper 59: G7 LEADERS SHOULD DISCUSS INTERNATIONAL TRADE (SERIOUSLY)
June 2021 – Author: Dr Totis Kotsonis, Pinsent Masons LLP
The Trade and Cooperation Agreement sets a new precedent for bilateral trade agreements by incorporating a set of so-called “level playing field” commitments that seek to maintain the Parties’ regulatory convergence in certain policy areas but without prohibiting their respective sovereign right to choose future regulatory divergence. Instead, continued convergence is encouraged by the inclusion of robust dispute resolution mechanisms, which provide for the possibility of either Party taking unilateral trade defence measures in certain circumstances. This Briefing Paper, by Dr Totis Kotsonis of Pinsent Masons LLP, looks at subsidy control, which forms a key part of the level playing field commitments in detail, describing the dispute resolution mechanisms that are available and analysing the effectiveness of the unilateral trade defence measures for which the TCA provides in this context. For reasons which are discussed in the paper, the author concludes that UK subsidies might be more prone to challenges than EU State Aid and that whilst the TCA inter-Party consultation provisions might prove crucial in limiting the risk of inter-Party disputes arising, further development of the UK domestic control subsidy system is required to make it more robust and less prone to challenges.
Read Briefing Paper 58: TCA DISPUTE RESOLUTION MECHANISMS AND SUBSIDY CONTROL COMMITMENTS
May 2021 – Authors: Yohannes Ayele, Guillermo Larbalestier and Nicolò Tamberi
After decades of close economic integration, the UK’s relationship with the EU, its biggest and closest trading partner, is now governed by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). In this Briefing Paper we look at how UK merchandise trade has performed under the new regulations in the first quarter of 2021. We employ different methodologies to quantify a TCA-effect and find that trade with the EU was hit hard in January 2021 but may have rebounded in February and March 2021, with heterogenous effects across sectors. We also investigate the extent to which UK exports have benefited from tariff-free access in EU markets.
Read Briefing Paper 57: POST-BREXIT: UK TRADE IN GOODS
May 2021 – Author: Emily Lydgate
In advance of the EU Commission’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism proposal in July, this Briefing Paper offers a conceptual rubric for evaluating CBA design as a policy trilemma between environmental ambition, technical feasibility and fairness. The paper discusses each aspect of the trilemma and outlines potential tradeoffs that may be necessary between reducing emissions, navigating the complexities of calculating charges, and ensuring mechanisms are WTO-compliant and fair to developing countries. The Briefing Paper also argues that CBA also gives rise to the need for new forms of trade and climate cooperation to determine which other countries or producers have equivalent pricing, and therefore should be exempted. The upcoming G7 and COP, both hosted by the UK, provide an opportunity to make progress on these important questions.
Read Briefing Paper 56: THE CARBON BORDER ADJUSTMENT TRILEMMA
This Briefing Paper analyses the EU’s move towards a more defensive trade policy, which enhances enforcement powers and commits to including sustainable development, environmental and labour protection goals in trade agreements. The paper examines the Current Trade Disputes where the EU has commenced formal action under a Free Trade Agreement – against Algeria, Ukraine, the Southern African Union and South Korea – and discusses the EU’s review and enhancement of International Trade Dispute Mechanisms. Professor Szyszczak concludes that, until the WTO Appellate Structure is operational, the EU is setting the pace for international trade dispute resolution.
Read Briefing Paper 55: EU ENFORCEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE RULES
January 2021 – Authors: Emily Lydgate, Erika Szyszczak, L. Alan Winters, Chloe Anthony
The Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between the UK and the EU came into force on the 1st January 2021. This Briefing Paper considers the governance, subsidies and the level playing field provisions. The analysis reveals that much of the area lies outside the normal dispute settlement procedure and in some cases bespoke procedures replace or supplement it. There are some innovative clauses concerning procedures to deal with imbalances arising from future labour and environmental policies, and the potential for review of the balance of the entire trade heading, but these are quite unknown quantities and have the capacity to create perpetual wrangling and bad feeling between the UK and the EU.
Read Briefing Paper 54: TAKING STOCK OF THE UK-EU TRADE AND COOPERATION AGREEMENT: GOVERNANCE, STATE SUBSIDIES AND THE LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
January 2021 – Authors: Ingo Borchert and Minako Morita-Jaeger
The Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between the UK and the EU came into force on the 1st January 2021. This Briefing Paper looks at the main changes to trading services. The authors find that provisions in the TCA are a major setback for services sectors (compared to the conditions for trading services within the Single Market or during the transition period), particularly for financial and transportation services. As a service-driven economy, this is a weak deal for the UK. A general ramification is that services trade with the EU may have to rely increasingly on commercial presence rather than cross-border supply. This shift, though by no means costless, will be relatively easier for large businesses that may already have affiliate enterprises within the EU-27. Furthermore, the TCA is an incomplete agreement in the sense that the precise conditions under which services can be traded with the EU still need to be worked out in a number of areas, including financial services, cross-border data flows, and mutual recognition of professional qualifications.
Read Briefing Paper 53: TAKING STOCK OF THE UK-EU TRADE AND COOPERATION AGREEMENT: TRADE IN SERVICES AND DIGITAL TRADE
January 2021 – Authors: Yohannes Ayele, Michael Gasiorek, Peter Holmes, Anna Jerzewska, Suzannah Walmsley
The Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between the UK and the EU came into force on the 1st January 2021. This Briefing Paper focusses on the provisions on trade in goods. It provides an analysis of the changes in tariffs; customs and trade facilitation; rules of origin; mutual recognition of testing and certification and takes a close look at one sector – fisheries – that was so contentious during the negotiations. The TCA is highly unusual in that it is an agreement which raises barriers to trade, and whilst it offers complete elimination of tariffs and quotas many other costs relating to trade have not been successfully minimized.
Read Briefing Paper 52: TAKING STOCK OF THE UK-EU TRADE AND COOPERATION AGREEMENT: TRADE IN GOODS
In this paper, the authors update their previous analysis of Brexit to reflect the presumed Free Trade Agreement (FTA). They assess the costs of Brexit with such an FTA and ask how much benefit the FTA will deliver relative to ‘No Deal’. This paper improves on previous analyses by including more detailed modelling of the costs of doing trade and of the barriers to services trade that the exit from the Single Market will introduce. Even with a deal, Brexit increases UK-EU trade costs, reduces trade between the two partners, and requires resources for form-filling, queuing, etc. The net effect is that the UK’s GDP will be 4.4% lower than in the absence of Brexit, compared with 5.5% lower if there had been no deal.
Read Briefing Paper 51: The Costs of Brexit
December 2020 – Authors: Minako Morita-Jaeger and Yohannes Ayele
The UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement has been presented by the UK Government as the first Free Trade Agreement (FTA) for the UK as an independent trading nation. This Briefing Paper provides an analysis of this new agreement in relation to the Japan-EU EPA and draws two major lessons for the UK’s future free trade agreements. First, the authors find that it mostly replicates the Japan-EU EPA, with the UK failing to break new ground after independence from the EU trade regime. Second, they argue that substantive and inclusive policy discussions with a range of stakeholders need to take place to enable public scrutiny and discussion of the implications of policy positions, before negotiating with trade partners.
Read Briefing Paper 50: The UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement: Lessons for the UK’s future trade agreements
November 2020 – Authors: Emily Lydgate and Chloe Anthony
The House of Lords are currently debating the controversial Internal Market Bill. In so doing, they are highlighting the ways in which the Bill threatens to undermine the devolution settlement. In this Briefing Paper, Emily Lydgate and Chloe Anthony spell out the issues that the Internal Market Bill raises for the relationship between England, Scotland and Wales in the critical area of food standards. The authors conclude that the overriding outcome is the consolidation of power in the central UK Government, raising significant – and still unresolved – constitutional and trade questions.
Read Briefing Paper 49: MAINTAINING THE UK INTERNAL MARKET FOR FOOD STANDARDS: FRAGMENTATION, COOPERATION OR CONTROL?
September 2020 – Authors: Pierluigi Montalbano, Silvia Nenci, Nicolo Tamberi and L. Alan Winters
This Briefing Paper considers how Brexit will impinge on the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries currently governed by the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiated by the EU. The authors explore whether the new Brexit-induced frictions on UK-EU trade will reduce the demand for ACP inputs – such as Cocoa products – into the goods that the UK and EU trade with each other. They conclude that the economic effects of even a ‘No Deal’ Brexit on ACP countries’ trade will be tiny in aggregate, because ACP countries supply only small amounts of inputs into the products involved in UK-EU trade.
Read Briefing Paper 48: THE “BEARABLE LIGHTNESS” OF BREXIT ON THE ACP COUNTRIES’ TRADE: GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS AND RULES OF ORIGIN
September 2020 – Authors: Emily Lydgate and Chloe Anthony
The UK is the first major economy to commit to a net-zero emissions by 2050 climate target, and it also has ambitious trade policy goals of providing multilateral leadership and concluding major new trade agreements. This Briefing Paper examines the coherence of UK trade and climate goals in regards to whether the UK Government has set out a clear strategy for integrating trade and climate policy, is acting on areas of mutual supportiveness, and is addressing areas of potential conflict. The authors find room for improvement in relation to all three areas. They identify a lack of cross-cutting strategy in UK climate legislation and in its approach to free trade agreements, and suggest the UK reforms its approach to fossil fuel subsidies and builds on its efforts in regard to environmental goods. Finally, the authors underscore the need for ambition and transparency for green subsidies and carbon pricing.
Read Briefing Paper 47: CAN THE UK GOVERNMENT BE ‘WORLD-LEADING’ IN BOTH TRADE AND CLIMATE POLICY
July 2020 – Author: Minako Morita-Jaeger
This Briefing Paper examines the underlying issues related to the Japan-UK Free Trade Agreement negotiation. The author argues that there are two significant challenges underlying the Japan-UK FTA negotiation: the EU-UK FTA and the timeframe. The paper then discusses what should be prioritised to make the Japan-UK FTA ambitious, taking into account the unprecedented short negotiating timeframe, and proposes a possible mechanism to cope with unfinished business in order to make the agreement truly valuable in the long-term.
Read Briefing Paper 46: THE JAPAN-UK FREE TRADE AGREEMENT – CONTINUITY OR NO CONTINUITY? HOW CAN IT STILL BE AMBITIOUS?
July 2020 – Authors: Michael Gasiorek and Julia Magntorn Garrett
The UK’s negotiation of a Free Trade Agreement with the EU will necessarily involve defining rules of origin, and before long negotiations with countries such as the US, Japan, and Australia will face the same task. In this Briefing Paper, the authors outline what rules of origin are, why they are needed, why they are complex, and which sectors in the UK may be most vulnerable to more restrictive rules of origin. They also discuss why the EU is highly unlikely to agree to the UK’s proposal on cumulation in rules of origin and argue that the obvious solution to this is for the UK to agree to the EU’s Pan Euro-Mediterranean Rules of Origin (PEM) which are the basis of the EU’s cumulation arrangements with a wide range of its neighbours. Any other outcome is likely to reduce the UK’s take up of trade preferences in its FTA with the EU.
Read Briefing Paper 45: WE’RE GOING TO MAKE THEM AN OFFER THEY CAN REFUSE: RULES OF ORIGIN AND THE UK-EU FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
July 2020 – Authors: Yohannes Ayele and L. Alan Winters
In this briefing paper, Dr Ayele and Professor Winters look at whether the immediate effect of the result of the Brexit referendum – the depreciation of sterling relative to all major currencies and the failure to increase UK exports after 2016 – could have been foreseen. They provide a brief description of recent UK trade history, followed by a review of different studies of the effect of exchange rate changes on trade prices, consumer prices and trade quantities. Finally, they explore the apparent effect of the sterling depreciation in June 2016 on UK trade and price behaviour. The authors show that the pass-through of exchange rate changes to trade and consumer prices and thence to trade quantities is rather complex, and hence difficult to predict with any confidence. They conclude that the failure of UK exports to boom was in part due to the dramatic increase in trade-policy uncertainty that the Brexit result heralded.
Read Briefing Paper 44: SHOULD THE BREXIT STERLING DEPRECIATION HAVE BOOSTED EXPORTS? HOW EXCHANGE RATES AFFECT TRADE AND PRICES
July 2020 – Authors: Peter Holmes, Julia Magntorn Garrett, L. Alan Winters
The UK’s draft text for the Free Trade Agreement with the EU indicates a vision of where the Government wishes to take the UK’s trade relationship with the EU. In some areas, the UK is unwilling to agree such deep integration as the Political Declaration foresaw and which the EU is seeking. However, in other areas, the UK is asking for more integration than the EU ordinarily offers partners in simple FTAs. This paper discusses four of these extensions in detail and provides further analysis of the implications for the negotiation process and future UK-EU trade.
Read Briefing Paper 43: UK-EU FREE TRADE AGREEMENT: PLEASE, SIR, I WANT SOME MORE
June 2020 – Author: Erika Szyszczak
State aid is a delicate issue in the current EU-UK trade negotiations. Whilst the EU is seeking dynamic alignment of any set of future UK State aid rules with the EU rules to maintain a ‘Level Playing Field’ (LPF) in areas relating to access to the Internal Market, the UK takes the stance that it would introduce its own regime of subsidy control. The UK prefers to adopt a more relaxed process for international trade based upon the rules in the WTO’s Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM) but relying on WTO rules would not create a robust domestic system of state aid control. To maintain a close trade relationship with the EU, the UK must manoeuvre into a position where it gives effect to a State aid regime equivalent to that maintained by the EU, with an effective and robust independent enforcement process, but the UK has taken a different view. The reaction of the UK Government to the COVID-19 crisis has revealed the need for transparency in the granting of subsidies as well as accountability in procurement and yet the current situation is very opaque.
Read Briefing Paper 42: STATE AID: NOT ONLY ABOUT TRADE
June 2020 – Authors: Michael Gasiorek and Anna Jerzewska
In this Briefing Paper, Michael Gasiorek and Anna Jerzewska provide an analysis of the UK’s recently published Command Paper. They argue that it highlights significant differences between the UK and the EU and does not fully address the challenges which come from the special situation around the border in the Irish Sea. As a result, they warn that businesses should expect more paperwork, bureaucracy and additional costs on trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain when the transition period ends in seven months’ time. Among the key stumbling blocks between the UK Government and EU that the Command Paper fails to resolve are the criteria for determining when a good is not at risk of moving into the EU market and would therefore not be subject to tariffs. Furthermore, permitting goods from Northern Ireland to freely enter Great Britain, could impact on the UK’s trade relations with third countries and even lead to WTO disputes.
Read Briefing Paper 41: THE UNRESOLVED DIFFICULTIES OF THE NORTHERN IRELAND PROTOCOL
May 2020 – Authors: Simon Evenett and L. Alan Winters
This Briefing Paper sets out a new basis for reciprocity in what might be deemed essential goods, of which the medical kit and equipment associated with COVID-19 are examples. The authors propose a trade policy bargain that, although time-limited at first, could evolve into a multilateral or plurilateral deal. As governments of net exporting nations realise that export bans do little to end shortages of medical kit in a world of international supply chains, and do much to antagonise trading partners and to embolden economic nationalists at home and abroad, this proposal provides them with a rationale for embracing a more collaborative approach that generates a commercial edge for their exporters of medical supplies. For nations reliant on foreign deliveries of these goods, this proposal provides greater reassurance that supplies will be forthcoming when they are needed—thereby diminishing the case for devoting scarce resources to an import substitution drive on medical goods. The authors describe the underlying commercial logic of this bargain, its elements, and their WTO compatibility. The paper also discusses this proposal in relation to other recent joint trade policy initiatives in this critical area of world trade.
Read Briefing Paper 40: PREPARING FOR A SECOND WAVE OF COVID-19: A TRADE BARGAIN TO SECURE SUPPLIES OF MEDICAL GOODS
The UK left the European Union on January 31, 2020. As the UK Government begins to develop the UK’s independent trade policy for the post-transition period, one part of the preparations is to establish the UK’s independent tariff schedule that will apply to goods imported into the UK. In February 2020, the Department for International Trade launched a public consultation concerning the UK’s applied Most Favoured Nation tariffs. This briefing paper outlines the proposals under consideration, discusses their potential implications, and provides our recommendations on the issues that we believe are important for the UK Government to consider when formulating the UK’s trade policy going forward. We explore the structure of the UK’s MFN tariff as a member of the EU and then analyse the potential impact of simplifying the tariff structure for firms, households, the environment and domestic policy objectives.
Read Briefing Paper 39: RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE UK GOVERNMENT’S GLOBAL TARIFF PROPOSALS
The importance of EU rules to maintaining open borders within Ireland has been at the centre of UK and EU negotiations. Yet what is less appreciated is the significance of those rules for achieving frictionless trade between England, Scotland and Wales. In this Briefing Paper, the authors highlight that leaving the EU could create new border trade barriers inside the UK, and opens up questions about how – and whether – the devolved nations will unite with England on external trade agreements. They argue that a US trade negotiation poses a serious threat to the unity of the United Kingdom because it would likely require changes to UK domestic legislation in very sensitive areas, including drug pricing and food safety regulation, which Scotland, with its large Remain-voting majority and stated desire to maintain alignment with EU regulation, would strenuously oppose. The authors argue that devolved nations should have a formal role in the setting of UK negotiating objectives, to ensure, among other things, that external trade agreements do not lead to internal trade barriers.
Read Briefing Paper 38: DESTRUCTION OF THE UNION: TOO HIGH A PRICE TO PAY FOR A US TRADE AGREEMENT
As set out in the EU Withdrawal Act (2018) the government’s approach to Brexit is to transfer EU law into UK law and address any deficiencies in that law by secondary legislation.
This Briefing Paper examines post-Brexit food safety legislation and finds that the UK’s post-Brexit safety rules fall short of the level of protection currently provided by the EU and, in some cases, they give ministers broad discretion to make future changes without full parliamentary scrutiny. This would provide a relatively clear path for a UK Prime Minister to overcome parliamentary opposition to any new trade agreements that cover agricultural and food products, such as US-UK FTA. Also, Brexit food safety legislation allows for devolution which could undermine both the UK’s ability to undertake a unified approach to external trade agreements and also the maintenance of the UK’s internal free movement of goods.
Since the 2016 Brexit Referendum, the strategic importance of increasing UK exports to outside of the EU has been heightened in the pursuit of new sources of future national growth. With this aim, the UK Government has put renewed priority on developing the UK’s export credit agency (UKEF) as a vital component of its new export strategy. Yet securing new export opportunities to support is increasingly challenging in the current trading environment of global export stagnation. Furthermore, although export credit support is seen as the fuel that powers the international trading system, in competing for overseas contracts there is a potential for governments to use public resources to provide unfair subsidies to exporting firms in the form of export financing.
This Briefing Paper examines the export credit support options open to UKEF, with specific reference to its international legal obligations under the OECD and the WTO. Leaving the EU will not change the UK’s obligations under either, but the UK Government will make and defend its position towards official export credit support as a single country, rather than within a bloc. The paper examines the rationale for official export credit support, and the rationale for regulating any such public support, then focuses on the UK ECA – the UKEF – from within the current international market for official export credit support.
The paper concludes that in a changing financial and regulatory environment, there is a two-fold challenge for the UK government. First, it needs to identify new ways to promote economic efficiency and competitiveness while avoiding corporate welfare. This is necessary to secure UK export markets for UKEF to support, whilst respecting international rules on subsidies, ethical standards, and environmental, social, and human rights. Second, there is a need for collective action to regulate export subsidies effectively, which requires the UK to work with renewed effort internationally to develop more comprehensive rules for regulating official export credit support and promote competition in the international trading global system.
Read Briefing Paper 36 – HAPPY CENTENNIAL BIRTHDAY UKEF: FIT FOR THE FUTURE?
August 2019 – Authors: Ilaria Fusacchia, Luca Salvatici and L. Alan Winters
A great deal of attention has been devoted to the consequences of different forms of post-Brexit trade policy for UK exports. But focusing on the gross value of UK exports – e.g. the decline in exports of completed cars as the cost of exporting to the EU rises – is only part of the story because it misses the effects on the sectors and other countries that supply inputs into UK goods. In this Briefing Paper, the authors unpack value chains to identify which sectors and countries create the value that is embodied in UK flows of exports and imports, and hence to identify how the changes in trade induced by a ‘No deal’ Brexit will affect the value contributed (i.e. the incomes generated) by different sectors and countries.
Studying only the effects of ‘No deal’ on the costs of conducting goods trade, but following them throughout the British economy, the authors find that ‘No deal’ could reduce UK GDP by 4% relative to remain. Moreover, because of the decline in incomes and the fact that services are key inputs into manufactured exports, the incomes generated in services sectors would also be around 4% smaller.
Read Briefing Paper 35 – BREXIT AND GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS: ‘NO-DEAL’ IS STILL COSTLY
Within days of Mr Johnson becoming Prime Minister, President Trump announced that talks about a “very substantial” trade deal with the UK are under way. In this joint Briefing Paper with colleagues from Georgetown University and UKTPO fellows, we consider the effects that Brexit uncertainty is likely to have on the capacity of the UK to agree a deal with the US and ask whether a deal is politically even possible in the UK. We investigate key issues in negotiating a bilateral agreement: the backstop and the problems posed by the EU and US standards regimes. The paper also explores the prospects and pitfalls of the US Government guidelines for negotiations between the US and the UK; the US’s potential strategic position on services and the declining importance of the UK and Europe as traditional places of spending for US multinational corporations especially in the areas of information technology soft- and hardware. Overall we conclude that while the governments involved see obvious political attractions in a UK-US free trade agreement, a quick and economically significant conclusion to the talks seems unlikely.
Read Briefing Paper 34 – THE FUTURE OF UK-US TRADE: AN UPDATE
Economists have long argued, and with good justification, that international trade brings overall benefits to economies. However, increasing trade is likely to create losers as well as winners. As the UK prepares to leave the EU and have an independent trade policy it is important to understand how future trade agreements, or policy changes, may affect economic outcomes such as prices, productivity and output, and through these, individuals and regions.
In this Briefing Paper, the authors provide a conceptual background of how trade changes may result in winners and losers – be these consumers, workers, regions, or industries, and give an overview of what the empirical evidence tells us about how developed economies have adjusted to changes in trade. They also consider potential policy responses that could help losers from international trade adjust, and ensure that the winners can take advantage of the new opportunities created by trade liberalisation.
Read Briefing Paper 33 – WINNERS AND LOSERS FROM INTERNATIONAL TRADE: WHAT DO WE KNOW AND WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY?
Launch and Panel Discussion at British Academy, 18 July 2019
June 2019 – Author: Mattia Di Ubaldo
Post-Brexit, the UK will offer preferential market access to developing countries under a Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). To allow developing countries to export to the UK after it leaves the EU on the same terms as the present, the UK Government’s plan is to replicate the GSP of the EU. This paper shows that simply rolling over the EU’s GSP, in particular, the rules for preferences removal (graduation), will determine changes in market access due to the uneven distribution of developing countries’ trade between the UK and the EU27 bloc. The country most affected would be India, which would lose trade preferences in the UK on a volume of trade worth approximately € 1.27 billion per year. Adjustments to the GSPs of both the UK and the EU, necessary to avoid the loss of trade preferences, are also discussed.
Read Briefing Paper 32 – A POST-BREXIT GENERALIZED SYSTEM OF PREFERENCES FOR THE UK: HOW TO GUARANTEE UNCHANGED MARKET ACCESS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES?
June 2019 – Authors: Julia Magntorn Garrett, Minako Morita-Jaeger and L. Alan Winters
In the case that the UK manages an orderly Brexit and has a transition period until the end of 2020, rather than just rolling over the existing agreements, what would be the possible options for future Free Trade Agreements?
In the case of a future UK-Korea deal, the UK could potentially negotiate a new FTA built on the Korea-EU FTA (KorEU) or negotiate a completely new FTA modelled on the Korea-US FTA (KORUS). Our comparative analysis of KorEU and KORUS in services reveals that the two agreements took very different approaches for services trade liberalisation. Both achieved “GATS-plus” liberalisation commitments from Korea. KORUS seems to have achieved slightly more than KorEU. However, KORUS is more complicated and less transparent than KorEU. It also contains more WTO-inconsistent features. The KORUS option would enable the UK to better pursue its own specific needs since it would not be directly bound by KorEU. On the other hand, the WTO-inconsistent aspects of KORUS would need to be avoided, based on a clear vision of UK’s contribution towards the future multilateral trading system. Either way, the UK would face two stumbling blocks: the UK’s lack of negotiating power and the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clauses in KorEU and KORUS (and other FTAs involving Korea). Whatever the scenario, the UK Government is urged to build its trade negotiating capacities to cope with these challenges.
READ BRIEFING PAPER 31 – CAN THE UK DO BETTER THAN JUST ROLLING OVER THE TRADE AGREEMENT WITH KOREA?
May 2019 – Author: Erika Szyszczak
Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanisms have been globally criticised as out-dated and inappropriate fora for the settlement of disputes involving States. Attempted reform is underway at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group III, at which the EU is a key player. The role of the EU as a significant moderniser of trade agreements will have implications for the UK in negotiating any future trade deals with the EU. For example, the consequences of the recent Opinion 1/17 on the legality of a new form of court system to handle investor-state disputes in the EU-Canada Agreement (CETA) are significant in analysing how the CJEU was persuaded to reach the conclusion that new judicial fora in international Treaties may be compatible with EU law. The litigation around the modern trade agreements of the EU is a warning signal that conducting trade agreements from scratch with the EU is not painless, with ratification potentially being very prolonged when there are challenges to the agreement at the national and EU level.
Read Briefing Paper 30 – Opinion 1/17: Towards A Modern EU Approach to Investor-State Dispute Settlement
March 2019 – Authors: Michael Gasiorek and Julia Magntorn Garrett
This paper assesses the possible consequences of the Government’s proposed No Deal tariff regime. While there have been numerous previous assessments of the economic impact of a ‘No Deal’, the tariff proposal by the UK Government provides a new set of tariffs which have not been assessed in the existing empirical literature. In this briefing paper, the authors explain carefully the Government’s proposals and identify how much of UK trade would be affected by the changes in tariffs in a ‘No Deal’ scenario and provide an empirical assessment of the scale of the economic challenge which could face UK industries in the event of ‘No Deal’. They find that a ‘No Deal’ Brexit will pose a significant challenge to the UK economy with a negative impact on output, exports and imports driven largely by the increased cost of trading with the EU. The results highlight that in the event of ‘No Deal’ the Government’s room for policy manoeuvre is somewhat limited.
Read Briefing Paper 29 – Deal or ‘No Deal’? The economic consequences of the UK’s ‘No Deal’ tariffs
February 2019 – Authors: Ilona Serwicka and Peter Holmes
Since the EU referendum, there has been a growing interest in the reintroduction of free zones in the United Kingdom. Those advocating free zones believe that they will help to boost British trade after Brexit and promote economic growth. This briefing paper presents a history of free zones in the UK and US and then looks at the EU context. Although there are potential benefits and savings that businesses can accrue from simplified customs procedures and relief on customs duties and tariff inversion, the authors explain that such benefits will be very limited in the UK context. This is due to state aid rules which limit the scale of assistance possible. The UK would still be affected by these in some way post-Brexit. Thus, while there is a scope for free zones shaping an export-oriented place-based regional development programme, policymakers should devise measures that counteract possible diversion of economic activity from elsewhere, and offer a wider set of incentives than just free zones, while keeping within our WTO and any ‘level playing field’ obligations that arise from our trade agreements.
Read Briefing Paper 28 – What is the extra mileage in the reintroduction of ‘free zones’ in the UK?
This briefing paper explores the likely content of a market access agreement for financial services between the UK and the EU. Despite the UK Government’s early hopes that all trade issues could have been settled in the Withdrawal Agreement, the actual situation is that this Agreement addresses only those trade issues necessary to ensure an open Irish Border. The accompanying Political Declaration on the future relationship between the UK and the EU lays out some broad non-binding principles on which negotiations around financial services access are intended to proceed during the transition period, but important details are undefined. During the negotiation of the Political Declaration itself, some counter-briefing took place as to the meaning of some of these principles. The existence of such counter-briefing suggests that when these negotiations commence, the rules of access for UK financial services will again be a contentious issue. This paper uses what we know now to analyse the options that may emerge and the likelihood of their adoption.
This study focuses on the economic shocks that a ‘no deal’ Brexit would entail across the constituencies of Hampshire and Sussex. We take estimates of the effects of a ‘no deal’ Brexit on output and employment in different sectors of the UK economy and using the composition of employment in each constituency, estimate how each constituency will be affected. The novel feature of our analysis is that we allow for commuting and so convert the Brexit shock from referring to workers in a constituency to referring to residents in the constituency. With the South East region the most heavily engaged in cross-border trade, after allowing for the fact that people often live and work in different places, we estimate that the shock to residents of Hampshire and Sussex could be equivalent to the loss of about 43,000 jobs. Given that Brexit decisions will ultimately be taken on the floor of the House of Commons, this Briefing Paper provides a base from which Hampshire and Sussex MPs can start to assess the impact of Brexit on their constituents.
Read Briefing Paper 26 – THE BREXIT BURDEN: A CONSTITUENCY LEVEL ANALYSIS FOR HAMPSHIRE AND SUSSEX
See also: Online Appendix and subsequent work repeating the exercise for the full list of 632 Parliamentary constituencies in Great Britain. A discussion of the (very slight) differences between this paper and the full results is here and the full results are in ‘no deal‘ and ‘soft deal‘ Brexit
This Briefing Paper provides a comprehensive overview of the EU’s Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clauses on services and investment. It discusses their scope and the exceptions they contain, and then considers how these clauses are likely to limit the extent of concessions that the EU and its existing partners are prepared to grant the UK.
The UK government has high expectations about future services trade deals with non-EU countries. Yet, in practice, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) typically only provide greater legal certainty about current applied policies rather than bringing about actual trade liberalization in services.This Briefing Paper looks at why it is so difficult to achieve actual liberalization in service negotiations and what FTAs, in practice, can offer. The authors argue that based on other countries’ experiences, the UK government will face several significant challenges and complexities in negotiating services FTAs with non-EU countries. To make progress on FTAs, the UK government will need to encourage many bodies across government.
Read Briefing Paper 24 – THE UK’S FUTURE SERVICES TRADE DEALS WITH NON-EU COUNTRIES: A REALITY CHECK
OCTOBER 2018 – Authors: Ilona Serwicka and Nicolo Tamberi
The United Kingdom has historically been one of the main recipients of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting more greenfield investment than other large European economies. However, the Brexit vote has introduced considerable uncertainty over the future growth potential of the UK market, and the ease of cross-border flow of goods and services. Following a peak of inward investment activity in early 2015, the number of FDI project announcements for the UK and the UK’s share of the European market for FDI have been falling.
In this Briefing Paper, we provide an analysis of inward FDI to the UK before and after the EU referendum, looking at the main foreign investors, which sectors they invest in and how trends in inward FDI have evolved over time. Our work suggests that following the Brexit vote, inward investment has been 16-20 per cent lower than it would have been if the UK had voted to remain a member of the EU, but that this impact differs depending on the sector.
Read Briefing Paper 23 – NOT BACKING BRITAIN: FDI INFLOWS SINCE THE BREXIT REFERENDUM
SEPTEMBER 2018 – Authors: Ingo Borchert and Nicolo Tamberi
The UK is one of the most services-oriented economies in the world, both in terms of production and exports. Services inputs embodied in manufacturing exports constitute an important but under-appreciated kind of services exports, so-called mode 5 services trade. This Briefing Paper provides the first estimates of mode 5 services trade disaggregated by UK region and industry, respectively, and over time. UK manufacturing exports entailed over £70 billion worth of domestic services inputs in 2017, which play an integral role in the competitiveness of UK manufacturing exports. Since these services are produced locally, changes in the trading environment for manufactures have direct implications for domestic employment in services sectors.
Read Briefing Paper 22 – THE ENGAGEMENT OF UK REGIONS IN MODE 5 SERVICES EXPORTS
JULY 2018 – Authors: Michael Gasiorek and Suzannah Walmsley
Leaving the EU will involve some possible combination of changes in tariffs, non-tariff measures, and also the amount of fish quotas that can be caught by the UK and the EU. The aim of the Briefing Paper is to detail the policy environment, and the policy considerations facing the UK government in the Brexit negotiations. Secondly, it provides an empirical assessment of what the impact on leaving the EU might be on the seafood industry. As the nature of the UK’s future trade relations with the EU are still uncertain, this paper explores several simulations which aim, broadly speaking, to capture the key variants of Brexit that appear to be under discussion.
July 2018 – Authors: Marc Busch, Michael Gasiorek, Peter Holmes, J. Brad Jenson, Rod Ludema, Emily Lydgate, Anna Maria Mayda, Pietra Rivoli, Jim Rollo, Stephen Weymouth, Rorden Wilkinson and L. Alan Winters.
Both US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Theresa May have stated their keenness to negotiate and agree the groundwork for a bilateral trade agreement after Brexit. This briefing paper looks at what the key issues are likely to be and what a transatlantic agreement may, or may not, comprise. First, we explore the extent to which a trade agreement between the US and the UK would have popular support at a time when debate about trade on both sides of the Atlantic is contested. Second, we consider what the benefits of such an agreement might be by considering the aggregate economic case. Finally, we probe where problems and tensions may lie, focusing primarily on the regulatory aspects of a transatlantic commercial tie-up.
Read Briefing Paper 20 – The Future of US-UK Trade: What case for a bilateral trade agreement?
As the UK contemplates new trade agreements, it needs to develop mechanisms to ensure that these uphold its commitment to environmental protection and high labour standards. This paper examines approaches to integrating sustainable development objectives into the negotiating process and reflecting these objectives through trade agreements. The UK’s ability to take leadership in this area will hinge on its ability to develop a robust framework to ensure that the negotiation process is transparent and allows for public consultation, and that the impact of new trade agreements – including on the environment and vulnerable populations – are assessed and addressed. In this respect, the UK can draw from, and improve upon, the EU’s experience with Sustainability Impact Assessment. The paper also highlights implications of the UK’s inheritance of the EU’s ‘cooperative approach’ to trade and sustainable development through the continuation of its trade agreements.
Read Briefing Paper 19 – Integrating sustainable development objectives into UK trade policy
March 2018 – Authors Julia Magntorn and L Alan Winters
In the search for a framework for a future UK-EU trade relationship, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA) has come under the spotlight. To inform the debate surrounding a potential ‘Canada plus’ model for the UK post-Brexit, this briefing paper provides an overview of the extent to which the EU restricts imports of services from Canada under CETA. The authors identify areas where ‘pluses’ may help to preserve existing levels of services trade between the UK and the EU post-Brexit, and discusses whether these are achievable. Further, the extent to which the EU’s commitments in CETA improve on pre-existing regimes is evaluated by comparing the degree of liberalisation in CETA with the EU’s prior commitments in the GATS.
Read Briefing Paper 18 – Can CETA-plus solve the UK’s services problem?
March 2018 – Author, Michael Gasiorek
There is much discussion about what the UK government wants in terms of the post-transition relations between the UK and the EU, and the Labour party has now also provided a little bit more clarity on its position. However, to what extent are the different UK-EU Brexit options achievable? Dr Michael Gasiorek explores two key concerns. The first concerns the issue of the compatibility or not of the different UK-EU Brexit options, with the issue of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The second issue concerns the subtleties of the difference between being in “the” EU Customs Union, in comparison to being in “a” customs union with the EU. While it might appear a small difference, in practices the differences may be substantial.The aim of this briefing paper is to consider what difference these developments make, to examine under what circumstances might the UK governments current position on future arrangements with the EU be possible (or not), and to offer some recommendations and reflections for the way forward.
Read Briefing Paper 17 – UK–EU trade relations post Brexit: binding constraints and impossible solutions
Trade in manufactures constitutes 65% of the UK’s trade with the EU and nearly 50% of the UK’s exports of manufactures go to the EU. In this new Briefing Paper, we look at the possible effects of Brexit on UK manufacturing in much greater sectoral detail than has been done before. For 122 manufacturing sectors, we estimate the exposure of these sectors to different versions of Brexit. Our projections depend on whether we assume the UK leaves the Customs Union and the Single Market, and on whether the UK makes a free trade agreement with the EU and is able to carry over existing free trade agreements with non-EU countries. In all cases, we find that introducing tariff and non-tariff barriers raises the prices that UK consumers and producers will face, and leads to reduced UK exports; but for some sectors, the increase in protection leads to higher UK output. The impact of Brexit is likely to be significantly different between high-tech and lower-tech sectors.
Read Briefing Paper 16: Which Manufacturing Sectors Are Most Vulnerable to Brexit?
Read the online Appendix and Appendix 2 – Simulation Results
January 2018 – Authors Peter Holmes and Nick Jacob
Rules of Origin (RoOs) are used by importing Customs authorities in the international trading system to determine if a product is considered as sufficiently linked to the exporting country to count as originating there, in order apply preferential or MFN (Most Favoured Nation) rates of tariff to the goods, and to check for quota, anti-dumping and related compliance. The importance of RoOs is due to the fact that duties and restrictions in many cases depend upon the source of imports. Proving origin will be a far bigger issue than it is now for UK business exporting to the EU after Brexit. With all businesses likely to have to rethink their compliance with Rules of Origin post-Brexit, this paper, based on a study carried out with the support of the British Chambers of Commerce, outlines the current Certificates of Origin regime and the options for change after Brexit.
Read Briefing Paper 15- CERTIFICATES AND RULES OF ORIGIN: THE EXPERIENCE OF UK FIRMS and the Online Appendix
January 2018 – Authors Ingo Borchert and Nicolo Tamberi
The UK’s exit from the European Union (EU) is likely to have significant ramifications for services trade because the Single Market has been particularly salient for facilitating the international exchange of services. Yet the discussion of potential effects on the British economy of Brexit has largely been confined to manufacturing sectors at the national level. Less attention has been paid to services sectors, even though the UK economy is particularly strong in exporting services. To address this void, this Briefing Paper describes the rich pattern by which UK regions are exporting different kinds of services. In particular, it traces the extent to which UK regions export services relatively intensively to EU countries relative to other destinations outside the EU.
Read Briefing Paper 14 – BREXIT AND REGIONAL SERVICES EXPORTS: A HEATMAP APPROACH and the Online Appendix.
December 2017 – Authors: Michael Gasoirek and Peter Holmes
Rolling over the 37 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with more than 60 countries that the UK currently has through the EU will be a monumentally complicated task and one that needs to be completed by March 2019. This Briefing Paper outlines why it may not be easy to get agreement on grandfathering with the FTA partner countries, and why even if agreement could be reached it is unlikely that trade will continue on the same basis as previously. A key point which emerges is that with regard to several key issues – Rules of Origin (RoOs), Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clauses, mutual recognition, and tariff-rate quotas – grandfathering the agreements is unlikely to happen without some engagement or negotiation with the EU. Hence what you might think is a bilateral issue between the UK and a given FTA partner, becomes a trilateral issue which also involves the EU.
Read Briefing Paper 13 – GRANDFATHERING: WHAT APPEARS BILATERAL IS TRILATERAL
November 2017 – Author: Peter Holmes
Consumers face many challenges post-Brexit. The new UK Trade White Paper published by the Department for International Trade in October 2017 has stated that it will give a major priority to consumers, but details remain to be spelled out. Increasing scepticism about free trade puts at risk the classic gains from trade – lower prices and better choice – and gives rise to fears of job losses from increased imports. On the other hand, some fear that Brexit – and potential trade agreements with third countries – will weaken or undermine consumer protection. In the addition to these substantive issues there are procedural questions too – how is consumer interest represented? This briefing paper addresses these issues of trade policy and consumer interests.
Read Briefing Paper 12 – TRADE AND CONSUMERS AFTER BREXIT
November 2017 – Author: Erika Szyszczak
The UK is searching for a framework for its post-Brexit trade arrangements with the EU. A clean Brexit from the EU has always been unrealistic and the EU is limited in the kind of trade arrangements it offers to third countries. This briefing paper examines the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement (AA) suggesting how a similar agreement may offer a way forward for the UK-EU negotiations. The EU-Ukraine AA reveals that the EU is willing to adapt previous Agreements to new circumstances. A similar UK-EU Agreement could provide access to the Single Market, maintain inward investment incentives and provide an attractive location for establishment of firms and enterprises, especially in the services sector – an area the UK is keen to protect. For the UK, the adoption of this approach would require less unravelling of existing UK laws, but offer some room for independence in negotiating future issues.
Read Briefing Paper 11 – A UK BREXIT TRANSITION: TO THE UKRAINE MODEL?
September 2017 – Authors: Emily Lydgate and L. Alan Winters
The EU Customs Union and Single Market created a significant volume of trade between the UK and the EU and stimulated the development of European value chains.The UK government has stated its intention to leave the Single Market and Customs Union and this remains the position of the leadership of both main political parties. Yet both enable a degree of integration far exceeding that attainable through any simple tariff-free Free Trade Area (FTA). In this briefing paper we examine the possibilities for maintaining some of these benefits in key sectors. WTO rules are drafted and applied in such a way that the UK and the EU27 could design a WTO-consistent trade agreement that goes some way towards preserving current trading conditions in a subset of sectors. We discuss how this might be achieved and also some of the limitations that such an approach entails.
May 2017 – Authors: Kym Anderson and Glyn Wittwer
The UK has accounted for a major share of the world’s wine imports for centuries, and wine currently accounts for more than one-third of UK alcohol consumption. Its withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit) therefore will affect not only UK wine consumers, producers, traders, distributors and retailers but also suppliers of those imports. Based on a model of the world’s wine markets, the impacts of various alternative Brexit scenarios are determined through to 2025, involving adjustments to UK and EU27 bilateral tariffs on wine imports and any changes to UK income growth and the value of the pound over the period of adjustment. The research finds that in the main scenario considered, for consumers in the UK the price of wine in 2025 is 22% higher in local currency terms than it would be without Brexit, the volume of UK wine consumption is 28% lower, and the value of UK imports is 27% lower because of Brexit. Such a sales reduction in the UK would be a blow to participants in UK wine bottling, transporting, storing, wholesaling and retailing businesses, as well as restaurants and pubs.
Read Briefing Paper 9 – WILL BREXIT HARM UK AND GLOBAL WINE MARKETS?
March 2017 – Author: Kamala Dawar
This briefing paper looks at some of the legal issues that will affect the UK’s public procurement laws and policies following Brexit. When the UK leaves the EU, it is unlikely to be able to simply rollover its current procurement coverage under the WTO Government Procurement Agreement. However, this opens up the possibility of pursuing horizontal policy objectives, such as promoting SME or green public procurement, which is possible under the WTO GPA obligations, but will also need to comply with other multilateral rules. Brexit could offer the UK the possibility to craft a procurement system flexible enough to incorporate the devolved procurement legislation, under the supervision of the Competition and Markets Authority. Such an integrated approach would be beneficial for value for money, legal clarity, and enforcement. It would help to ensure conformity to WTO commitments, while acting as a counterweight against fragmentation.
Read Briefing Paper 8 – BREXIT AND GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT
January 2017 – Author: Alan Swinbank
EU policies have directly influenced UK food supplies and prices, the profitability of farm businesses, and the rural environment and land use. While Brexit offers the UK an opportunity to design a more efficient agricultural policy that would benefit farmers and the environment, this new policy could have possible implications for consumer prices and will have to conform to World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. This Briefing Paper explores the issues around existing and continuing support for farm businesses and the rural environment, and the UK’s future agri-food trade relations.
Read Briefing Paper 7 – WORLD TRADE RULES AND THE POLICY OPTIONS FOR BRITISH AGRICULTURE POST-BREXIT
November 2016 – Author: Ingo Borchert
Trade in services is economically significant for several reasons; it directly affects UK consumers’ welfare in such sectors as telecommunications, health or retail distribution; producer services such as finance, transportation or professional services are inputs into both the production and international exchange of goods; and it makes a positive contribution to the UK’s current account. Brexit will have important repercussions for the UK’s economic ties with the EU in the realm of services markets. This paper highlights how Brexit might directly and indirectly affect UK services trade and policy-making in this area.
Read Briefing Paper 6 – SERVICES TRADE IN THE UK: WHAT IS AT STAKE?
November 2016 – Authors: Michael Gasiorek, Peter Holmes, Jim Rollo
This briefing paper provides an evaluation of the feasibility of different options for post-Brexit trade relations. With the EU accounting for close to 50% of the UK’s imports and exports of goods and services, the focus in this paper is on the UK’s future trading relations with the EU itself. Whilst all of the options listed in this paper are problematic, the aim is to examine the limitations of what may be feasible and – in so doing – to suggest a way, or ways, forward. Given that the UK’s objectives take the form of seeking to impose certain constraints on the post-Brexit outcome, we look at the extent to which each option is consistent with these ‘red lines’.
Read Briefing Paper 5 – UK-EU TRADE RELATIONS POST BREXIT: TOO MANY RED LINES?
October 2016 – Authors: Erika Szyszczak and Emily Lydgate
Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) will govern the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Several aspects of the interpretation and application of Article 50 TEU pose particular challenges, including domestic controversy regarding the constitutional requirements for triggering Article 50 TEU, the short time-span of negotiation, and the uncertain role for the UK in trade negotiations with the EU and the rest of the world during the withdrawal process. This paper outlines these issues, focusing in particular on the EU and international trade dimensions of withdrawal, in order to provide clarity and highlight potential pitfalls affecting both the EU and the UK.
Read Briefing Paper 4 – TRIGGERING ARTICLE 50 TEU A LEGAL ANALYSIS
October 2016 – Author: Peter Holmes
This briefing paper summarises two issues that a post-Brexit United Kingdom would face if it re-joined the European Economic Area (EEA). It introduces the concept of the EEA+EU as a ‘regulatory union’ within which products, once approved in one country, can circulate freely. Secondly, Rules of Origin (RoOs) — which in effect specify the domestic share of value-added — would need to be adhered to, raising concerns about the viability of supply chains with UK links.
Read Briefing Paper 3 – ROOS AND RULES: WHY THE EEA IS NOT THE SAME AS MEMBERSHIP OF THE SINGLE MARKET
September 2016 – Authors: Emily Lydgate, Jim Rollo, Rorden Wilkinson
This paper discusses the challenges for the UK as it attempts to redefine and renegotiate its post-Brexit foreign trading relationships. This briefing makes the assumption that the UK will not, after leaving the EU, remain part of the customs union. On this basis, the paper examines the nature of such trade negotiations; the scale of the negotiating tasks confronting the UK; and potential approaches that may reduce the immediate negotiating load. It also identifies the countries that should be prioritized for trading negotiations, and examines the likely resources that will be required to undertake these.
July 2016 – Authors: Jim Rollo, Ingo Borchert, Kamala Dawar, Peter Holmes, L. Alan Winters
By electing to leave the European Union, the United Kingdom has chosen – among many other things – to leave the customs union (and the single market that includes all member states) and reassert its status as an individual member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In doing so, it will take sole responsibility for the control and governance of its external trade policy with all other WTO members (including the EU) within the framework of WTO rules. This paper explores the nature of those WTO commitments and how they might impact the UK from the date of its exit from the EU.
Read Briefing Paper 1 – THE WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION: A SAFETY NET FOR A POST-BREXIT UK TRADE POLICY?
Professor L Alan Winters, Lord O’Donnell and Amar Breckenridge discuss the future of UK trade policy in a Trade Knowledge Exchange Webinar, recorded on 20 July 2018.
Listen to the full recording of the session.
Read a digest of the webinar in ‘Five things to know about UK Trade Policy after the White Paper‘.
Charlotte Humma November 9th, 2016
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