1 May 2018
Ilona Serwicka is Research Fellow in the economics of Brexit and Charlotte Humma is the Business Manager at the UKTPO.
As the European Union (EU) Withdrawal Bill and the Trade Bill progress through parliament, forming a customs union with the EU has become a key issue. On 18 April 2018, the House of Lords voted to keep open the option of staying in a Customs Union after Brexit, promptly followed by the UK Government reaffirming its intention neither to remain in the EU Customs Union nor to seek to form a new one.
So where does this leave us? (more…)
Charlotte Humma May 1st, 2018
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Customs Union, Free Trade Agreement, Frictionless trade, Irish border, Rules of Origin, Single Market, tariffs, Trade agreements
6 February 2018
Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis, Ilona Serwicka is Research Fellow in the Economics of Brexit. All are Fellows of the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO).
How would different versions of Brexit affect the UK economy? Are some parts of the economy likely to be affected more than others? Will trade deals with the rest of the world make up for any loss of UK access to EU markets? These are highly topical questions this week as the UK Cabinet’s Brexit committee makes important decisions about its objectives in the next stage of the Brexit negotiations.
They are the questions we seek to address in our new Briefing Paper ‘Which Manufacturing Sectors are Most Vulnerable to Brexit?’, published today. As it says on the tin, we answer them only for the manufacturing sectors; and in doing so we take a very disaggregated approach to UK manufacturing. (more…)
Charlotte Humma February 6th, 2018
Posted In: UK - Non EU, UK- EU
Tags: Brexit, FTA, Grandfathering, manufacturing, Rules of Origin, Trade agreements
16 January 2018
Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO. Nick Jacob is a PhD Candidate in Economics at the University of Sussex.
The need for UK firms to comply with detailed Rules of Origin in a possible post-Brexit Free Trade Agreement with the EU has been widely reported. But the different procedures which firms could use to prove their compliance — and the costs to firms in time and money — have been mostly overlooked. (more…)
Charlotte Humma January 15th, 2018
Posted In: UK - Non EU, UK- EU
Tags: Brexit, Certificates of Origin, FTA, Rules of Origin, tariffs, Trade agreements
8 December 2017
Jim Rollo is Deputy Director of UKTPO, Emeritus Professor of European Economics at the University of Sussex and Associate Fellow, Chatham House. Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO.
The agreement to proceed to the next phase of Brexit talks is a step forward on the road to a softer Brexit. But it does not offer a definitive solution to the status of the Irish border, which will depend on the nature of the final agreement on the UK-EU trade relationship. At best, it represents an exercise in constructive ambiguity designed to allow the shape and length of any interim agreement, which will help determine the shape of the long-term agreement and, in turn, will be the basis of any permanent solution to the status of the Irish land border with Northern Ireland. (more…)
Charlotte Humma December 8th, 2017
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Customs Union, Grandfathering, Irish border, Rules of Origin, trade
27 September 2017
Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics and Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis respectively. Both are Fellows of the UKTPO.
With respect to the post-Brexit period, the UK needs to sort out its trade relationships not just with the EU but also with non-EU countries. In regard to the EU, Mrs May’s stated objective is for an “implementation” period during which “access to one another’s markets should continue on current terms”, such that “businesses and public services should only have to plan for one set of changes in the relationship between the UK and the EU”. However, for this to be possible, the UK will also have to deal with the relationship with non-EU countries. In this blog, we focus on an important aspect of Free Trade Agreements (FTA) which centres around something which is a bit technical and often not well understood – called “Rules of Origin” (RoOs).[1] (more…)
Charlotte Humma September 27th, 2017
Posted In: UK - Non EU, UK- EU
Tags: Exports, Grandfathering, Rules of Origin, tariffs, trade, Trade agreements
27 June 2017
Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO
The UK government’s new approach to trade policy towards developing countries has just been released in a DFID document that has been widely commented on. The government’s proposals are welcome, but yet they are not quite as generous as they may seem.
A Bloomberg piece says, optimistically: “The government promises improved access to U.K. markets for the world’s poorest countries”. However the only concrete promise is that
“ around 48 countries across the globe, from Bangladesh to Sierra Leone, Haiti and Ethiopia will continue to benefit from duty-free exports into the UK on all goods other than arms and ammunition, known as ‘everything but arms.”
In other words, the UK pledges to maintain existing arrangements for the poorest countries currently benefiting from the EU’s Everything but Arms deal (EBA). This amounts to simply maintaining the status quo for this group and is not actually an improvement.
Charlotte Humma June 27th, 2017
Posted In: UK - Non EU
Tags: developing countries, DFID, Everything but arms, GSP+, Rules of Origin
