Frictionless trade

Is it really true that Brexit has had no harmful effects?

17 February 2023 L. Alan Winters is Co-Director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy, Professor of Economics at University of Sussex Business School and Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. Given the recent discussions about future UK-EU relations and the review of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) after two years, I have started reading the Brexit literature again. A recent paper – ‘What impact is Brexit having on the UK economy?’ by Graham Gudgin, Julian Jessop and Harry Western (GJW) from October 2022 argues there is no hard evidence of harm and that studies that claim to find harm are biased and/or incompetent! In this blog, I consider a few of their points in four areas. […]

By Nick Phipps|2023-02-17T13:10:10+00:0017 February 2023|UK- EU|3 Comments

What we can do to fix Brexit and the Irish Border crisis

23 May 2022 Peter Holmes is a Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and Emeritus Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex Business School UK trade with Europe has significantly fallen off (see UKTPO BP 63 for an early assessment). UK GDP has fallen by 4%. If we cancel the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) – which is all the talk at the moment – the economic consequences of Brexit will get worse and let’s not even think about the political consequences. Is any of this fixable? Yes, if we look ahead to 2025 when the Brexit agreement with the EU—formally known as the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) —is up for its 5-yearly review. UK stakeholders, including political parties planning their manifestoes ahead of the next UK general election in 2024, should consider their Brexit positions now – but it’s not a case of leave or remain, rather a case of ‘tweak the Brexit agreement to something that better suits us’. […]

By Nick Phipps|2022-05-23T11:48:39+01:0023 May 2022|UK- EU|1 Comment

A Customs Union with the EU: A giant step politically but a small step for the economy

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? […]

By Nick Phipps|2018-05-01T08:43:32+01:001 May 2018|UK- EU|8 Comments

Is it really true that Brexit has had no harmful effects?

What we can do to fix Brexit and the Irish Border crisis

A Customs Union with the EU: A giant step politically but a small step for the economy

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