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So far Nick Phipps has created 232 blog entries.

The Customs Union: The Fiction of ‘Frictionless’ Trade

14 August 2017 After Brexit, the UK will have to leave the EU Customs Union (CU) and become a legally separate customs territory. It might then, however, seek to create a new Customs Union with the EU to cover their mutual trade. The UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex (UKTPO) has produced this short animated video that explains what this entails, and what kind of an agreement the UK and the EU would need to establish in order to achieve the same level of trade costs as we have now. Ultimately, the video explains, a Customs Union will not produce ‘frictionless’ trade without re-creating several aspects of current EU membership. With Brexit negotiations already underway, it emphasises that maintaining a customs union is just one part of the story; and not, by itself, the be all and end all for achieving a smooth trading process. https://vimeo.com/229297381 Republishing guidelines The UK Trade Policy Observatory believes in the free flow of information and encourages readers to cite our materials, providing due acknowledgement. For online use, this should be a link to he original resource on the our website. We do not however, publish under a Creative Commons license. This means you CANNOT [...]

By |2017-08-14T11:00:37+01:0014 August 2017|UK- EU|4 Comments
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UK government’s approach to trade policy towards developing countries needs further development

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. […]

By |2017-06-27T16:32:44+01:0027 June 2017|UK - Non EU|1 Comment
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The EU referendum – one year on, and back at square one?

23 June 2017 L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of UKTPO and Ilona Serwicka, Research Fellow at UKTPO One year ago the British people voted to leave the EU. Out of 33.5 million votes cast, 51.9 per cent were for ‘leave’, albeit in the absence of any statement about what ‘leaving’ might mean. The government is still vague about what the UK’s post-Brexit trade policy should be – even after triggering the formal leave process – but the general election has pressured Theresa May to soften her Brexit stance. Even though Brexit negotiations are now formally under way, the options suddenly again seem wide open for debate. In terms of options the UK is back at square one, but following a year’s analysis, it is now clearer what these options amount to. Over the year, the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) has discussed many of the options and this note draws on some of that analysis to try to light the path forward. […]

By |2017-06-23T09:23:51+01:0023 June 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|1 Comment
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Brexit: hard truths and hard choices

19 June 2017 Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, and is a member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. It’s now 12 months since the referendum decision, 3 months since the Article 50 notification, and only 21 months until the date on which the UK is due to exit the EU. Brexit negotiations start today, but most politicians have still not progressed beyond the stage of wishful thinking. There are ambiguities about the objectives of both the large political parties but each seems to want some kind of free trade agreement (FTA) with the EU after Brexit, often described by a phrase like ‘tariff-free access to the single market’. Behind such inherently confused terminology lies an apparent wish to have a ‘deep’ FTA; that is to say, a UK-EU FTA which has no tariffs and sufficient regulatory convergence between the UK and the EU that many of the non-tariff advantages of the single market are retained. Here’s the first hard truth: a deep UK-EU FTA cannot be negotiated in 21 months. Even much weaker agreements take longer, especially if the political and technical ground has not been prepared in advance, so it’s not [...]

By |2017-06-19T12:11:42+01:0019 June 2017|UK- EU|6 Comments
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Disentangling Brexit trade politics and policies

12 June 2017,  L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of UKTPO. Suddenly everyone is talking again about the UK’s new trading relationship with the rest of the EU. Given the structure of the new Parliament, any party’s views may turn out to be pivotal. This blog is partly about what the parties say and partly about making conversation between them fruitful by clarifying the language. […]

By |2017-06-12T17:17:47+01:0012 June 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|3 Comments
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Animal Welfare and Post-Brexit Trade: can you have your cake made with free range eggs and eat it?

12 June 2017 Guest blog by Iyan I.H. Offor, Trade & Animal Welfare Project Officer at Eurogroup for Animals and David Bowles, Assistant Director, Public Affairs, RSPCA. The Conservative Government has been quick to highlight the potential benefits and quick wins for animal welfare made possible by new UK trade competencies post-Brexit. However, experience with the reality of trade negotiations is making some animal welfare organisations more sceptical. The UK has some of the highest standards in the world enacted under a legislative model. This is in contrast to the approach of the US and Canada, for example, which place reliance upon voluntary industry standards. Diverging welfare standards can result in increased imports of low-welfare products for two reasons. First, lower animal welfare standards are invariably linked to cheaper production which out-factors transport costs. Second, there are no effective mandatory product labelling mechanisms for animal welfare, except for shell eggs. Thus, although consumers express willingness to buy higher welfare products and to pay a premium for such products, they inadvertently purchase low welfare meat and dairy because the market does not operate transparently. This puts the livelihoods of British farmers who comply with animal welfare production requirements at risk. […]

By |2017-06-12T10:16:46+01:0012 June 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|2 Comments
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South East hopes for tourism boom but fears border headache post Brexit

5 June 2017 Brexit could lead to a boom in tourism and high-end exports in the South East, according to a consultation of locals by trade experts at the University of Sussex. However, there is growing concern about the logistical headache of potentially increased customs and immigration checks at South-East airports, seaports and the Channel Tunnel, the process found. With the UK General Election only a week away, and with Brexit such an important issue for this election campaign, economists and lawyers from the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) based at the University of Sussex have been exploring the key issues for post-Brexit trade policy for the South-East region. […]

By |2017-06-05T11:31:27+01:005 June 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments
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What do the General Election Manifestos say about International Trade? The Scottish National Party

31 May 2017 Compiled by Fellows of the UKTPO Brexit will leave many areas of UK policy open to change. International trade policy is among the most important of these for UK prosperity and also among the most immediate because the status quo cannot simply be extended. This is the sixth in a series of blogs reporting what the major political parties say about trade policy in their 2017 manifestos, as they become available. The UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) has set out a series of issues that it believes should be considered in any election manifesto that might form the basis of the UK’s future trade policy. The table below checks whether or not the SNP Manifesto mentions these important elements explicitly or implicitly. Following that, we offer a brief commentary on the treatment of trade policy in the manifesto. […]

By |2017-05-31T11:14:37+01:0031 May 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments
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Will Brexit harm UK and global wine markets?

30 May 2017 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) will therefore 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, in their Briefing Paper ‘Will Brexit harm UK and global wine markets?’ Professor Anderson and Glyn Wittwer determine the impacts of various alternative Brexit scenarios 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. Their research indicates that for wine markets, the impact of the UK leaving the Customs Union is likely to come not only from tariff changes but also from slowed growth of UK incomes and devaluation of the pound. […]

By |2017-05-30T15:52:42+01:0030 May 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments
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What do the General Election Manifestos say about International Trade? UKIP

26 May 2017 Compiled by Fellows of the UKTPO Brexit will leave many areas of UK policy open to change. International trade policy is among the most important of these for UK prosperity and also among the most immediate because the status quo cannot simply be extended. This is the fifth in a series of blogs reporting what the major political parties say about trade policy in their 2017 manifestos, as they become available. The UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) has set out a series of issues that it believes should be considered in any election manifesto that might form the basis of the UK’s future trade policy. The table below checks whether or not the UKIP Manifesto mentions these important elements explicitly or implicitly. Following that we offer a brief commentary on the treatment of trade policy in the manifesto. […]

By |2017-05-26T16:12:22+01:0026 May 2017|UK- EU|0 Comments
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