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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

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

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 [...]