About Sunayana Sasmal

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So far Sunayana Sasmal has created 7 blog entries.

A critical look at the UK’s Critical Minerals Strategy

The UK has now released its new Critical Minerals Strategy which outlines the prospective domestic and international policy actions that the UK Government will take, or will consider, in its pursuit of critical minerals security. By doing so, the UK joins a host of regions (the United States, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, African countries) that have emphasised the central role of critical minerals in their trade policies, foreign policies, and green industrial strategies. These regions also published their respective strategic approaches to critical minerals recently. There is a powerful narrative in developed economies regarding the indispensability of critical minerals for national and economic security, seeking to strengthen supply chains and make them more resilient by reducing ‘import dependence’ imports and diversifying international sourcing. Concern over  Chinese, near-monopolistic involvement in critical minerals supply chains, which could be weaponised, provides the main geopolitical context for most of these actions. At the same time, mineral-rich countries, which range from those in the developing world (including African and Southeast Asian countries) to Australia and Canada, are looking to leverage their mineral wealth to secure their own mineral-led industrial futures while exploring the right policy mix to attract investments and provide secure partnerships to access-seeking [...]

By , |2025-12-09T11:47:28+00:009 December 2025|Blog, International Trade, UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments
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The Long Game beyond tariffs

The global economy faces a roller-coaster ride every time Mr. Trump is in the White House. Last time, a focus on controlling China’s growing economic power meant that the rest of the world narrowly escaped the wrath of the United States executive, with some tariffs on some sectors. This time around, things are quite starkly different: it is difficult to even know who constitutes a friend or a foe. All trading partners are now threatened with high horizontal tariffs in the name of “reciprocity”. Adding to this list of unknowns is the uncertainty around non-tariff policies, the uncertain implementation of non-binding deals, and the nature of an elusive collective response. First, tariff and non-tariff policies. Trump appears focused on tariffs, using import tariff threats to secure various trade concessions and other commitments. Unsurprisingly, the prevailing vexation of the rest of the world is regarding the higher tariffs on their exports to the US. There will certainly be losers both in the US and its trading partners, due to the shocks of tariff hikes. The hope is for a predictable and stable trading environment to be restored soon. However, while we worry about tariff hikes and policy uncertainty, we should not [...]

By |2025-08-01T13:02:51+01:001 August 2025|Blog, International Trade, UK - Non EU|0 Comments
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Stroking a bear to get half a sandwich

The UK and the US announced the first bilateral post-Reciprocal Tariffs deal on 8 May, named the 'U.S.-UK Economic Prosperity Deal' (henceforth the US-UK EPD). The document published yesterday draws out the contours of this EPD, alongside some concrete initial proposals for reciprocal preferential market access for selected goods. Notwithstanding the negotiations starting immediately, this arrangement can be called off at any time, simply by the two parties giving each other written notice. Besides its symbolic and diplomatic relevance, what is the value of this emerging deal for the UK? This is not a Free Trade Agreement. At first glance, it looks like a quid-pro-quo “mini-deal” of limited economic relevance that the US strong-armed the UK into accepting under the threat of tariffs. The UK is getting some respite from Trump’s tariffs in the (important) car and the (strategic) steel and aluminium sectors, in exchange for lowering tariffs on some agricultural products such as ethanol and beef, the latter on a reciprocal basis. But a closer reading of the ‘General Terms document’ suggests that it is more than this, and a lot worse. First, as stated on page 1 of the text, the arrangement that the US and the UK [...]

By , , , , |2025-05-09T18:57:18+01:009 May 2025|Blog, International Trade|0 Comments
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BP 79 – A Stacked Deck that Keeps Getting Higher: The Relationship between Critical Raw Materials, the WTO and ‘Strategic’ Partnerships.

Download Briefing Paper 79 Briefing Paper 79 - April 2024 Sunayana Sasmal Key points Introduction A Cluster of Issues: Access, Development, Sustainability, Security Is the WTO complicit in perpetuating the resource curse? Setting Priorities Straight: Why does it matter? The Continuing Faults in Our Corrective Instruments: Partnership Arrangements Two Roads Diverged: Where do we go? Conclusion Key points Critical raw materials (CRMs) are central to global energy transition, but they are unequally distributed, creating complex demand-supply tensions. The conflicting interests exhibited by resource-rich countries, resource-hungry countries, affected communities and the environment, all operating amid other geopolitical tensions, lead to conflicting trade policies. On one hand, the resource-rich aim to pursue CRM-led industrialization using trade-restrictive policies; and the resource-hungry use free trade agreements or other bilateral agreements to secure market access and/or to prohibit the use of trade-restrictive measures. Existing global trade rules tend to support market access to CRMs while challenging the ability of resource-rich countries to pursue certain trade policies in support of CRM-led industrialization. This risks either adverse WTO rulings or adoption of inefficient and inequitable policies. Partly in response there has been a rise in new international arrangements in the form of memoranda of understandings, [...]

By |2025-12-12T10:45:21+00:0026 April 2024|Comments Off on BP 79 – A Stacked Deck that Keeps Getting Higher: The Relationship between Critical Raw Materials, the WTO and ‘Strategic’ Partnerships.
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Briefing Paper 79 – THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS, THE WTO AND ‘STRATEGIC’ PARTNERSHIPS

In this Briefing Paper, Sunayana Sasmal analyses the contribution of multilateral trade rules and recent strategic partnerships, and stresses the importance of moving away from recent fragmented approaches,  in favour of enhanced multilateral cooperation. Read Briefing Paper 79: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS, THE WTO AND ‘STRATEGIC’ PARTNERSHIPS.

By |2024-11-20T12:41:59+00:002 April 2024|Briefing Papers|0 Comments
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“There Ain’t No Rules in a Knife Fight” and probably not enough in the WTO

23 February 2024 Peter Holmes is a Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and Emeritus Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex Business School. Sunayana Sasmal is a Research Fellow in International Trade Law at the Observatory. The World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system is in crisis. Here, and in a comprehensive working paper, we discuss one potential solution to one of the many issues confronting it. Non liquet is a legal principle that allows a tribunal to decline rendering a ruling when there is no law. We think this concept could partially address the major issue of judicial overreach. But first, some background. […]

By , |2025-01-15T12:21:08+00:0023 February 2024|Uncategorised|0 Comments
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Do labour and environmental provisions in trade agreements lead to better social and environmental outcomes in practice?

13 December 2023 James Harrison is Professor in the School of Law at the University of Warwick. Emily Lydgate is Professor in Environmental Law at the University of Sussex and Deputy Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO).  Ioannis Papadakis is a researcher at the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP) and a Research Fellow in Economics. Sunayana Sasmal currently serves as a Research Fellow in International Trade Law at the UKTPO. Mattia di Ubaldo is Fellow of the UKTPO and Research Fellow in Economics of European Trade Policies. L. Alan Winters is Founding Director of the UKTPO,  Co-Director of the CITP and Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex. In answering this important question, different disciplinary approaches have emerged as have a range of different and sometimes contradictory findings. At the moment, scholars from the different disciplines are not talking to each other about the implications of this. The authors of this blog suggest it is vitally important that they begin to do so.   Trade agreements around the world increasingly include environmental and labour provisions. Their presence attests to policymakers’ recognition that trade agreements cannot simply focus on economic issues. They should also address environmental and social [...]

By , , , , |2025-01-15T12:35:09+00:0013 December 2023|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|3 Comments
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