{"id":1002,"date":"2017-06-27T16:32:44","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T15:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2017-12-12T16:58:29","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T16:58:29","slug":"trade-policy-towards-developing-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/2017\/06\/27\/trade-policy-towards-developing-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"UK government\u2019s approach to trade policy towards developing countries needs further development"},"content":{"rendered":"Share this article: <\/em> \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>

\"\"27 June 2017<\/p>\n

Dr Peter Holmes<\/a>\u00a0Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the\u00a0UKTPO<\/em><\/p>\n

The UK government\u2019s new approach to trade policy towards developing countries has just been released in a DFID document<\/a> that has been widely commented on. \u00a0<\/span>The government\u2019s proposals are welcome, but yet they are not quite as generous as they may seem.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Bloomberg piece says, optimistically: \u201c<\/span>The government promises improved access to U.K. markets for the world\u2019s poorest countries<\/a>\u201d.\u00a0<\/span>However the only concrete promise is that<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span> 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 \u2018everything but arms.\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the UK pledges to maintain existing arrangements for the poorest countries currently benefiting from the EU\u2019s Everything but Arms deal (EBA). <\/span>This amounts to simply maintaining the status quo for this group and is not actually an improvement. <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As for other countries, it only says <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOn leaving the EU, the UK Government will also explore options to expand on relationships with developing countries such as Jamaica, Pakistan and Ghana\u201d. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pakistan in particular benefits from the EU\u2019s GSP+<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>arrangement under which many of its most important exports come into the EU duty-free. Since the UK is its largest EU trade partner it matters a lot to Pakistan to keep this access. The EU scheme makes the duty free access conditional on Pakistan\u2019s compliance with a number of key international conventions on labour and environmental standards, human rights and good governance. In fact, the government of Pakistan recognises the principles behind these conventions as being in line with their own constitution and it does not object to the incentive to implement them. There is every reason<\/a> for the UK to keep these conditions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, there is one reason why two separate GSP+ schemes (EU and UK) are less good than a single scheme. There is a<\/span> significant <\/span>potential for restrictive Rules of Origin to make it harder for goods, including materials from the UK, getting duty free into the EU and vice versa without a comprehensive UK-EU deal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, the DFID statement does not specifically say what happens to goods that are coming in under the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). These are essentially free trade agreements with partners, including Ghana and Jamaica – and other Caribbean countries, which allow most goods to come in tariff-free from the partners. But while GSP(+) and EBA are preferences that the UK can unilaterally maintain, the EPAs are negotiated agreements – and Rules of Origin are highly relevant in cases where for example goods are produced in developing countries and then sent for processing partly in the EU and partly in the UK. <\/span><\/p>\n

A final point to note is that the statement does not mention non-tariff barriers, which is fair enough given that its subject was tariffs, but this will need to be addressed in future.<\/span><\/p>\n

So this is definitely a welcome step but needs more development. In ‘A new UK trade policy towards developing countries: what sort of transition?’<\/a> Jim Rollo has put forward valuable suggestions<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span>The trouble is that whilst in Professor Rollo’s paper and in David Davis\u2019s speech<\/a> it is firmly asserted that Britain must \u201cput its faith in free trade\u201d, \u00a0<\/span>the actual politics of supporting farmers and other vested interests may make this politically challenging.<\/span><\/p>\n

Disclaimer:<\/em>
\nThe opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the University of Sussex or UK Trade Policy Observatory.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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The UK Trade Policy Observatory\u00a0believes in the free flow of information and encourages readers to cite our materials, providing due acknowledgement.\u00a0For online use, this should be a link to he original resource on the our website. We do not however, publish under a Creative Commons\u00a0license. This means you CANNOT republish our articles online or in print for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Share this article: 27 June 2017 Dr Peter Holmes\u00a0Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the\u00a0UKTPO The UK government\u2019s new approach to trade policy towards developing countries has just been released in a DFID document that has been widely commented on. \u00a0The government\u2019s proposals are welcome, but yet they are not quite as generous as they may seem. A Bloomberg piece says, optimistically: \u201cThe government promises improved access to U.K. markets for the world\u2019s poorest countries\u201d.\u00a0However the only concrete promise is that \u201c 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 \u2018everything but arms.\u201d In other words, the UK pledges to maintain existing arrangements for the poorest countries currently benefiting from the EU\u2019s Everything but Arms deal (EBA). This amounts… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[129970],"tags":[134693,123619,123618,123617,123620],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1362,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/1362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/uktpo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}