Alasdair Smith, Author at UKTPO

The EU should agree an all-UK backstop

22 May 2018 Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex and is a member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. Not before time, the UK government is giving attention to the ‘backstop’ provision which will be written into the Withdrawal Agreement for Brexit to avoid a hard border in Ireland. But rather than focussing on how to sell this politically in the UK, the government needs to address the more pressing question of whether the European Union (EU) will agree to the UK’s preferred version of the backstop. […]

By Alasdair Smith|2025-07-18T13:49:59+01:0022 May 2018|UK- EU|13 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 Alasdair Smith|2025-07-18T13:56:40+01:002 March 2018|UK- EU|2 Comments

Will unilateral free trade be the making of Brexit?

22 February 2018 Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, and is a Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. This week Economists for Free Trade (EfFT) suggested that if the post-Brexit UK were to embrace unilateral free trade (UFT), the net effect of Brexit would be positive rather than negative. Earlier work on unilateral free trade has focused exclusively or largely on tariff reductions – and this latest paper has the merit of recognising that border costs and non-tariff measures (NTMs) should be brought into the analysis. Unfortunately, as Jonathan Portes and Chris Giles have observed, the EfFT assumptions are not credible.[1] […]

By Alasdair Smith|2025-07-18T13:57:57+01:0022 February 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|3 Comments

Briefing Paper 16 – WHICH MANUFACTURING SECTORS ARE MOST VULNERABLE TO BREXIT?

Trade in manufactures constitutes 65% of the UK’s trade with the EU and nearly 50% of the UK’s exports of manufactures go to the EU. In this new Briefing Paper, we look at the possible effects of Brexit on UK manufacturing in much greater sectoral detail than has been done before. For 122 manufacturing sectors, we estimate the exposure of these sectors to different versions of Brexit. Our projections depend on whether we assume the UK leaves the Customs Union and the Single Market, and on whether the UK makes a free trade agreement with the EU and is able to carry over existing free trade agreements with non-EU countries. In all cases, we find that introducing tariff and non-tariff barriers raises the prices that UK consumers and producers will face, and leads to reduced UK exports; but for some sectors, the increase in protection leads to higher UK output. The impact of Brexit is likely to be significantly different between high-tech and lower-tech sectors. Read Briefing Paper 16: Which Manufacturing Sectors Are Most Vulnerable to Brexit? Read the online Appendix and Appendix 2 – Simulation Results

By Michael Gasiorek, Ilona Serwicka, Alasdair Smith|2024-11-20T13:28:54+00:001 February 2018|Briefing Papers|0 Comments

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 Alasdair Smith|2025-07-18T14:14:27+01:0019 June 2017|UK- EU|6 Comments

Brexit and Scotland

21 December 2016 Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, and is a member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. In ‘Scotland’s place in Europe’, published on 20 December, the Scottish Government affirms its wish that the whole UK should remain in the European single market and the EU customs union. If, however, the UK leaves the customs union and is ejected from the single market, the Scottish government wants Scotland to remain in the single market. Commentators, by no means all of them instinctively unsympathetic to the Scottish Government’s case, have noted that the creation of a regulatory border between England and Scotland could be problematic. But the problems would not all be on the Scottish side. […]

By Alasdair Smith|2025-07-18T14:48:11+01:0021 December 2016|UK- EU|0 Comments

About Alasdair Smith

The EU should agree an all-UK backstop

What should Theresa May have said this week?

Will unilateral free trade be the making of Brexit?

Briefing Paper 16 – WHICH MANUFACTURING SECTORS ARE MOST VULNERABLE TO BREXIT?

Brexit: hard truths and hard choices

Brexit and Scotland

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