Download Briefing Paper 59 Briefing Paper 59 – June 2021 Ingo Borchert, Michael Gasiorek, Emily Lydgate, L. Alan Winters Key Points Introduction WTO reform: Plurilateral Agreements Trade and Health Digital Trade Trade and Climate Policy Conclusion Editorial Note Key points For the first time, the G7 has an explicit ‘trade track’ as part of its discussions. This opens the door to cooperation and progress in a range of key areas. International trade is increasingly about services, digital products and delivery, domestic regulation, and links to non-trade areas such as health and climate change.  The WTO is struggling to keep up. The UK should use its G7 Presidency to help overcome its slow progress by leading the G7 to create a system to facilitate open plurilateral agreements (OPAs). In addition to discussions on the role that trade can play in addressing the COVID pandemic, G7 leaders should recognise that trade and investment agreements need to make it easier for governments to pursue legitimate health policies with regard to non-communicable diseases in non-discriminatory and minimally trade-distorting ways. The G7 can also advance the possibility of future policy coordination over data regulation by including specific policies and recommendation on digital trade [...]

Download Briefing Paper 56 Briefing Paper 56 – May 2021 Emily Lydgate Key Points Introduction The CBA Trilemma CBA proposals – tradeoffs and the trilemma CBAM design decisions and the climate club Conclusion Key points As countries move to achieve net-zero targets there is a risk their industries will relocate to countries where emitting CO2 is cheaper and easier. An option for addressing this so-called carbon leakage, to which the EU has already committed, is applying domestic carbon prices to imported products, or Carbon Border Adjustment (CBA). Both the UK and US are also considering CBA. It’s still unclear how exactly CBA will be designed and the EU Commission will publish a proposal in July. In advance of this, I examine CBA design as a trilemma between the goals of environmental ambition, technical feasibility and fairness. This trilemma means that there is no optimal solution for CBA design, but rather trade-offs between goals. 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. This might mean simply agreeing broad shared aims, such as net-zero targets, or much more [...]

Download Briefing Paper 54 Briefing Paper 54 – January 2021 Emily Lydgate, Erika Szyszczak, L. Alan Winters, Chloe Anthony Key Points Introduction The Constitutional Structure of the TCA Dispute Settlement The Level Playing Field Subsidies Labour and Environmental Standards Precaution Climate Remedial Measures Rebalancing: Dynamic Alignment in Disguise? Significant Uncertainty What does this imply for the long run? Conclusion Annex Key Points The UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) has a complex bureaucratic structure, at the apex of which is a Partnership Council. The Partnership Council has powers to amend most of the TCA by mutual agreement, and there will be five-yearly reviews of the operation of the TCA. The UK regime for managing subsidies will be very similar to the EU system; the TCA will allow the UK and EU to challenge each other’s subsidies, ultimately referring disputes to arbitration. On labour standards and the environment, the EU and UK have committed not to weaken standards in ways that affect trade or investment and there is a fairly rigorous procedure for addressing violations. In addition, there are highly innovative procedures for rebalancing the trade elements of the TCA (and ultimately cancelling them) if one side changes its [...]

Download Briefing Paper 49 Briefing Paper 49 – November 2020 Emily Lydgate and Chloe Anthony Key Points Introduction The post-Brexit food standards jigsaw Retained EU law: Consolidating power but allowing divergence Common frameworks: Food law made through collaborative effort The Internal Market Bill: Divergence with a twist How do the pieces fit together? Conclusion Footnotes Key points Post-Brexit food standards governance requires piecing together three new processes with very different – even opposite – implications. Retained EU law gives devolved nations independent control over domestic food standards and allows ministers to make new rules in these areas. Common frameworks aim to create harmonised food standards across the UK. The Internal Market Bill (IM Bill) makes it very difficult for devolved nations to restrict or impede imports from other devolved nations. Putting these pieces together provides a picture that is unfavourable to the regulatory and political autonomy of Scotland and Wales. The IM Bill’s market access requirements could override agreed harmonised standards set out in common frameworks, which are cooperative and consultative rather than legislative. The IM Bill also undermines permitted devolution as England’s larger size and market power may make it difficult for devolved nations to maintain different [...]