About L. Alan Winters

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far L. Alan Winters has created 83 blog entries.

China and the WTO

10 December 2021 Michael Gasiorek is Professor of Economics and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex and L. Alan Winters is Professor of Economics and Founding Director of UKTPO China acceded to the World Trade Organisation twenty years ago. Yet despite being a member of the international trading club for two decades, China’s ‘role’ in the trading system continues to generate controversy  across a range of areas such as the alleged support to state-owned enterprises boosting their international competitiveness, restrictions on foreign direct investment in China and the ineffective intellectual property protection in China. In addition, and sometimes conflated with trade, there are technology-related security concerns and human rights abuses, notably with regard to the Uyghurs. The Covid-19 pandemic has also raised worries in some quarters about the vulnerability of supply chains, including over-reliance on particular suppliers such as China in critical sectors. […]

By , |2025-07-18T09:53:34+01:0011 December 2021|UK - Non EU|0 Comments
Read More

The UK’s new trade deals – what should happen before they are signed?

26 November 2021 Chloe Anthony is an ESRC-funded doctoral researcher in environmental law at the University of Sussex Law School. Minako Morita-Jaeger is a Policy Research Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Sussex Business School. L. Alan Winters is Professor of Economics and Founding Director of UKTPO. Trade deals primarily aim to facilitate trade between countries by lowering barriers to trade in both goods and services. Many of these barriers are increasingly concerned with different regulations across countries and also with so-called ‘non-trade policy areas’ such as labour or environmental standards. The UK’s most recent FTAs – for example, the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership – aim for cooperation beyond trade. The domestic impacts of trade deals – economic, social and environmental – can be significant, so it is important that UK trade deals are scrutinised domestically before they are signed. For example, trade agreements with larger partners, such as the EU or the US, may have significant domestic impacts. Even if aggregate impacts of a trade deal with one country are small, there still may be significant implications for certain sectors or groups within [...]

By , , |2025-07-18T09:55:01+01:0026 November 2021|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|2 Comments
Read More

The UK’s new Trade Agreements: Curb your Enthusiasm

8 November 2021 L. Alan Winters is Professor of Economics and Founding Director of the UKTP0 and Guillermo Larbalestier is Research Assistant in International Trade at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO. Key Findings: To date, the UK government has signed no new trade agreements relative to what it would have had as a continuing member of the EU. The Government estimates that the two agreements in principle announced this year (Australia and New Zealand) will increase UK Gross Domestic Product by between £200 and £500 million annually – that is, 0.01% to 0.02% (one to two ten-thousandths) of GDP or between £3 and £7 per head of population – and that only after they have bedded down over 15 years or so . We were asked to sum up the economic benefits of the UK’s new post-Brexit trade agreements. Our first observation is that if we take as a starting point the trade agreements that the UK would have been party to as a member of the EU, the government has, to date, signed no new trade agreements! […]

By , |2025-07-18T09:55:42+01:008 November 2021|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|44 Comments
Read More

Honesty is such a lonely word…

22 July 2021 Michael Gasiorek is Professor of Economics and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) at the University of Sussex. L. Alan Winters is Professor of Economics and Founding Director of the UKTPO. The UK Government’s command paper on Northern Ireland published yesterday (21 July 2021) is significant in four regards. First, because it explicitly recognises – at length – that the Protocol is not working (at least not for the UK) and needs to be modified in form or in implementation. This is almost certainly correct. […]

By , |2025-07-18T10:00:14+01:0022 July 2021|UK- EU|100 Comments
Read More

Safeguard tariff rate quotas on steel imports: The Computor says ‘no’, but the Government says ‘yes’

8 July 2021 L. Alan Winters is Professor of Economics and Founding Director of the UKTPO. Guillermo Larbalestier is Research Assistant in International Trade at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO. On 1st June 2021, as part of its post-Brexit trade architecture, the UK Government launched the Trade Remedies Authority (TRA). On 11th June the TRA recommended the extension of only some of the quotas and tariffs on steel imports that the UK had inherited from the EU. On 30th June, one day before these measures were due to expire, the Government rejected the TRA’s recommendation and extended the policies on several categories of steel for which the TRA had recommended the revocation. It also announced a review to check whether the TRA was ‘fit for purpose’. What was going on? And does it matter? […]

By |2025-07-18T10:00:50+01:008 July 2021|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|1 Comment
Read More

BP 59 – G7 Leaders should discuss international trade (seriously)

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 [...]

By , , , |2025-12-12T11:51:55+00:009 June 2021|Comments Off on BP 59 – G7 Leaders should discuss international trade (seriously)
Read More

Briefing Paper 59 – G7 LEADERS SHOULD DISCUSS INTERNATIONAL TRADE (SERIOUSLY)

International trade in a digital world is increasingly influenced by domestic regulation and is linked to non-trade areas such as health or climate change.  This makes it difficult for the WTO’s consensus- and trade-focused structure to make swift progress.  This Briefing Paper looks at how the G7 leadership across all four Trade Tracks could provide the necessary impetus for multilateral or open plurilateral solutions, in order to avert further fragmentation of the trading system. Read Briefing Paper 59: G7 LEADERS SHOULD DISCUSS INTERNATIONAL TRADE (SERIOUSLY)

By , , , |2024-11-20T13:05:13+00:002 June 2021|Briefing Papers|0 Comments
Read More

‘Global Britain’ is a slogan: global Britain is a fact

5 May 2021. L. Alan Winters is Professor of Economics and Founding Director of the UKTPO. Guillermo Larbalestier is Research Assistant in International Trade at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO. The Government’s Integrated Review, Global Britain in a competitive age, published in March 2021, presents the Government’s vision for the UK in 2030 and outlines plans to achieve it. It emphasises the importance of Britain asserting its influence on the world stage by sustaining advancements in science and technology, shaping the rules-based international order, and strengthening security and defences at home and overseas. It has a section titled “Putting trade at the heart of Global Britain” and expresses support for the multilateral system, designing rules and ensuring trade is fair and efficient. The document says that it is a “guide for action”; it says lots of the right things, but on the ground the UK is going backwards. […]

By , |2025-07-18T10:01:39+01:005 May 2021|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|1 Comment
Read More

BP 54 – Taking Stock of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement: Governance, State Subsidies and the Level Playing Field

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 [...]

By , , , |2025-12-17T15:31:28+00:0015 January 2021|Comments Off on BP 54 – Taking Stock of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement: Governance, State Subsidies and the Level Playing Field
Read More

Briefing Paper 54 – TAKING STOCK OF THE UK-EU TRADE AND COOPERATION AGREEMENT: GOVERNANCE, STATE SUBSIDIES AND THE LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

The Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between the UK and the EU came into force on the 1st January 2021. This Briefing Paper considers the governance, subsidies and the level playing field provisions. The analysis reveals that much of the area lies outside the normal dispute settlement procedure and in some cases bespoke procedures replace or supplement it.  There are some innovative clauses concerning procedures to deal with imbalances arising from future labour and environmental policies, and the potential for review of the balance of the entire trade heading,  but these are quite unknown quantities and have the capacity to create perpetual wrangling and bad feeling between the UK and the EU. Read Briefing Paper 54: TAKING STOCK OF THE UK-EU TRADE AND COOPERATION AGREEMENT: GOVERNANCE, STATE SUBSIDIES AND THE LEVEL PLAYING FIELD 

By , , , |2024-11-20T13:06:58+00:003 January 2021|Briefing Papers|0 Comments
Read More

Our home

University of Sussex Logo

© 2024 UK Trade Policy Observatory

Site by: Phipps Design

Go to Top