tariffs

A Customs Union with the EU?

19 April 2018 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. On Wednesday this week, the House of Lords voted that after Brexit a customs union with the EU should not be ruled out. If it remains in the legislation, it would require the government to submit a report to Parliament on the Customs Union option. This blog discusses some of the key issues that would need to be considered in such a report. […]

By Nick Phipps|2018-04-19T16:58:21+01:0019 April 2018|UK- EU|6 Comments

What can the UK learn from existing customs unions?

29 March 2018 Dr Ingo Borchert is Senior Lecturer in Economics and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and Julia Magntorn is Research Assistant in Economics at the Observatory. With one year to go until the UK will leave the European Union (EU), sorting out Britain’s trade relation with the EU is the most important task. Yet the design of the future UK-EU agreement has implications for trade policy towards non-EU countries. On account of this, the British Prime Minister in her Mansion House speech ruled out forming a new customs union with the EU because this “would not be compatible with a meaningful independent trade policy.” Indeed, having sovereignty over its external trade policy post-Brexit has been at the forefront of the UK’s negotiation agenda, and consequently, the provision in the current draft Withdrawal Agreement that the UK may commence Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations with other countries during the transition period was perceived as an important concession won. […]

By Nick Phipps|2018-03-29T10:20:25+01:0029 March 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|3 Comments

Brexit will negatively affect all regions of the UK, but the North East is most vulnerable

26 March 2018 Ilona Serwicka is Research Fellow in the economics of Brexit at the UKTPO The UK economy will be worse off after Brexit regardless of the terms of departure from the EU: this is (with a small number of exceptions) a consensus reached by previous analyses of the impact of Brexit. Anything that differs from the status quo of EU membership – ranging from a ‘soft’ Brexit that involves staying within the Customs Union and/or the Single Market to a ‘hard’ scenario of leaving the EU with no deal – will hurt growth prospects for the UK economy. […]

By Nick Phipps|2018-03-26T11:55:36+01:0026 March 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|4 Comments

What should Theresa May have said this week?

2 March 2018 Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, and is a member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. The European Commission has this week published its controversial draft of the withdrawal treaty for the UK’s exit from the EU. The draft includes the EU’s proposal for dealing with the issue of the border in Ireland – Northern Ireland to remain in a customs union with the EU and to retain all the elements of the Single Market that support free movement of goods. […]

By Nick Phipps|2018-03-02T16:10:12+00:002 March 2018|UK- EU|2 Comments

The irreconcilability of the UK Government’s objectives for Brexit

2 March 2018 Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis respectively. He is a Fellow of the UKTPO. There is much talk about the UK not being able to “cherry-pick” and “have its cake and eat it” with regards to post-Brexit trade policy with the EU. There are a couple of issues here. First, all EU agreements are different and hence by definition bespoke. Cherries are picked by both sides. This will also be true of a future UK-EU agreement. The question, therefore, really is to do with the extent to which the EU will grant the UK a bespoke deal in serious and substantive ways. The second issue is that it is far from clear that the UK government currently knows what all the ingredients are and what the recipe is for the cake it is hoping to share with the EU. […]

By Nick Phipps|2018-03-02T11:38:29+00:002 March 2018|UK- EU|0 Comments

It’s not what the rules are, it’s the way that you show it: proving ‘origin’ post-Brexit

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. […]

By Nick Phipps|2018-01-15T21:19:43+00:0015 January 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|1 Comment

Hard Brexit, soft Border. Some trade implications of the intra-Irish border options.

7 December 2017 Dr Emily Lydgate is a lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. How can the UK uphold its commitment to leaving the EU Single Market and Customs Union while also preserving the invisible intra-Irish border? Leaving aside crucial questions of political feasibility, this post looks at some of the options and their trade and border implications. Notably, there are limits to ‘flexible and creative’ solutions that involve turning a blind eye to customs and regulatory checks solely on the intra-Irish border: trade rules leave little room for such ad hoc approaches. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-12-07T13:34:29+00:007 December 2017|UK- EU|2 Comments

Boeing – Bombardier and Brexit II

17 October 2017 Steve McGuire is Professor of Business and Public Policy and Head of the School of Business, Management and Economics at the University of Sussex. He is a Fellow of the UKTPO. Bombardier has found an elegant solution to its trade problems with the United States: sell a controlling stake in the programme to a company with deeper pockets to defend itself – and with a US production base immune, by definition, from US tariffs. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-10-17T14:53:45+01:0017 October 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|1 Comment

No deal’ Brexit tariffs could mean millions of households facing price rises of over £500 a year

17 October 2017 Lower-income households would be disproportionately affected should the UK revert to WTO tariffs Exiting the EU without a trade deal and reverting to WTO ‘most-favoured nation’ (MFN) tariffs with the EU would lead to significant price rises across a range of goods, with low-income households facing the biggest cost pressures. This is according to a new joint-report published by the Resolution Foundation and the UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-10-17T08:11:04+01:0017 October 2017|UK- EU|2 Comments

Boeing, Bombardier and Brexit: what does a North American trade dispute say about Brexit?

27 September 2017 Steve McGuire is Professor of Business and Public Policy and Head of the School of Business, Management and Economics at the University of Sussex. He is a Fellow of the UKTPO. As Bombardier is bombarded with a 220% tariff increase on exports to the US, the UK needs to wise up. There are two key points from the Boeing-Bombardier dispute that have implications for Brexit. First, leaving the European Union will not affect the sovereignty that national governments already have to dish out state aid for key industries. This will not change. Second, and this is the critical point, trade is bound up in broader political calculations. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-09-27T15:59:33+01:0027 September 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|4 Comments

Partners