Briefing Paper 5 – November 2016 Download Briefing Paper Michael Gasiorek, Peter Holmes and Jim Rollo Key Points Introduction What Agreement Would Respect the UK’s Red Lines? How do the Options Stack Up? So What is Really Feasible? Reflections on the Political Economy of a UK/EU-27 Agreement Timing and Transition Arrangements Can the Red Lines be Relaxed? If So, Which? Conclusion: is ‘Hard Brexit’ Inevitable? Glossary […]
Briefing Paper 13 – December 2017 Download Briefing Paper Michael Gasiorek and Peter Holmes Key Points Introduction How Important are the Existing FTAs? How Could Grandfathering Happen? Why Grandfathering has Trilateral Dimensions Conclusions and Recommendations […]
Download the Briefing Paper Briefing Paper 16 – February 2018 Michael Gasiorek, Ilona Serwicka, Alasdair Smith Key Points Introduction UK Manufacturing in 2016 Modelling the Impact of Brexit on Manufacturing Work to Date Five Brexit Scenarios Average Impact Impact on Different Scenarios R&D Intensity Regional Impact Conclusion Annex: Modelling Details References Further Information Key Points None of the five Brexit scenarios that we model leads to a positive outcome for UK manufacturing. Even if the UK were to remain a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), UK manufacturing industry risks shrinking as a result of the UK leaving the EU. However, there is considerable variation across manufacturing sectors. While textiles, clothing and footwear production may have the largest decline, food processing sectors may see growth in domestic production. Although post-Brexit trade barriers may lead to expansion in output in some manufacturing sectors, this will come at the expense of higher prices for consumers and for producers buying intermediate inputs. High tech and medium-high tech manufacturing sectors are more at risk of a significant decline in domestic production than medium and medium-low tech sectors. This has important implications for the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy, which aims to support [...]
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
Rolling over the 37 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with more than 60 countries that the UK currently has through the EU will be a monumentally complicated task and one that needs to be completed by March 2019. This Briefing Paper outlines why it may not be easy to get agreement on grandfathering with the FTA partner countries, and why even if agreement could be reached it is unlikely that trade will continue on the same basis as previously. A key point which emerges is that with regard to several key issues – Rules of Origin (RoOs), Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clauses, mutual recognition, and tariff-rate quotas – grandfathering the agreements is unlikely to happen without some engagement or negotiation with the EU. Hence what you might think is a bilateral issue between the UK and a given FTA partner, becomes a trilateral issue which also involves the EU. Read Briefing Paper 13 – GRANDFATHERING: WHAT APPEARS BILATERAL IS TRILATERAL
11 October 2017 Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis Reading the Government’s White Paper on trade, and the Customs Bill on future customs arrangements, together with Monday’s statement from the Prime Minister seemed like a Groundhog day moment. In other words, this is somewhere we have been before – repeatedly. […]
27 September 2017 Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics and Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis respectively. Both are Fellows of the UKTPO. With respect to the post-Brexit period, the UK needs to sort out its trade relationships not just with the EU but also with non-EU countries. In regard to the EU, Mrs May’s stated objective is for an “implementation” period during which “access to one another’s markets should continue on current terms”, such that “businesses and public services should only have to plan for one set of changes in the relationship between the UK and the EU”. However, for this to be possible, the UK will also have to deal with the relationship with non-EU countries. In this blog, we focus on an important aspect of Free Trade Agreements (FTA) which centres around something which is a bit technical and often not well understood – called “Rules of Origin” (RoOs).[1] […]
2 February 2017 Dr Michael Gasiorek, senior Lecturer in Economics, Managing Director of InterAnalysis, and member of UKTPO responds to the United Kingdom’s exit from and new partnership with the European Union White Paper. My top line response to the White Paper is that it is full of wishes and hopes, but there is very little specific detail in there. No doubt this is in part because the government would argue that it does not want to give too much away so as to strengthen their hand in the negotiations, but also because some of the problems are somewhat intractable, (eg. CTA and Ireland) and finally, because the government probably does not yet know itself. Specifically, on trade, there really is almost nothing new in the White Paper. One can exegetically examine the wording to see if there are any new insights but these are hard to find. I thought it was interesting how much work had gone into discussing dispute resolution, and wonder whether it suggests any view regarding the likelihood of future disputes? […]
This briefing paper provides an evaluation of the feasibility of different options for post-Brexit trade relations. With the EU accounting for close to 50% of the UK’s imports and exports of goods and services, the focus in this paper is on the UK’s future trading relations with the EU itself. Whilst all of the options listed in this paper are problematic, the aim is to examine the limitations of what may be feasible and – in so doing – to suggest a way, or ways, forward. Given that the UK’s objectives take the form of seeking to impose certain constraints on the post-Brexit outcome, we look at the extent to which each option is consistent with these ‘red lines’. Read Briefing Paper 5 – UK-EU TRADE RELATIONS POST BREXIT: TOO MANY RED LINES?
12 September 2016 Michael Gasiorek is a Senior Lecturer in Economics, in the School of Business, Management and Economics and a member of UKTPO. He is also Managing Director of InterAnalysis, a University spin-out company focusing on trade policy. There has been talk in the past week about a future free trade agreement (FTA) between the UK and Australia – and indeed Australia expressed interest in such an FTA soon after the Brexit referendum. For the UK government this seems to be an affirmation of the future possibilities for the UK, as and when it assumes full responsibility for trade policy post Brexit. In reality, our trade with Australia is relatively small and so the real value may be in the opportunity for the UK’s fledgling trade negotiators to get round the table with friendly faces and hammer out a low-stakes trade deal. […]
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