UK- EU

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

Sustainability Impact Assessment for post-Brexit Britain

15 February 2018 Rob Amos, Research Fellow in Law, Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, University of Sussex. Rob is conducting a project on Sustainable Trade Post-Brexit in collaboration with the UK Trade Policy Observatory. As the UK begins to devise its independent trade policy, it is essential that any new trade agreements it negotiates are subject to Parliamentary, as well as public, oversight and scrutiny. To facilitate such oversight, the UK should undertake Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) for these agreements. If the UK is serious about sustainable development, it must ensure that any future trade agreements do not negatively impact the environment and communities either at home or abroad. […]

By Rob Amos|2025-07-18T13:58:28+01:0015 February 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|3 Comments

How will Brexit affect the UK’s manufacturing industry?

6 February 2018 Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis, Ilona Serwicka is Research Fellow in the Economics of Brexit. All are Fellows of the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO). How would different versions of Brexit affect the UK economy? Are some parts of the economy likely to be affected more than others? Will trade deals with the rest of the world make up for any loss of UK access to EU markets? These are highly topical questions this week as the UK Cabinet’s Brexit committee makes important decisions about its objectives in the next stage of the Brexit negotiations. They are the questions we seek to address in our new Briefing Paper ‘Which Manufacturing Sectors are Most Vulnerable to Brexit?’, published today. As it says on the tin, we answer them only for the manufacturing sectors; and in doing so we take a very disaggregated approach to UK manufacturing. […]

By Nick Phipps|2018-02-06T13:14:12+00:006 February 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|14 Comments

It’s not what the rules are, it’s the way that you show it: proving ‘origin’ post-Brexit

16 January 2018 Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO. Nick Jacob is a PhD Candidate in Economics at the University of Sussex. The need for UK firms to comply with detailed Rules of Origin in a possible post-Brexit Free Trade Agreement with the EU has been widely reported. But the different procedures which firms could use to prove their compliance — and the costs to firms in time and money — have been mostly overlooked. […]

By Nick Phipps|2018-01-15T21:19:43+00:0015 January 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|1 Comment

Leave-voting regions are “most exposed” to Brexit services shock

11 January 2018 Dr Ingo Borchert is Lecturer in Economics and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. Nicolo Tamberi is a Research Assistant in Economics for the Observatory The North East and West Midlands are the most reliant on the European market, sending around half of their services exports to the EU. Sources: Office for National Statistics (2017a); and authors’ calculations. Two of the biggest Brexit-voting regions would be hit hardest by a potential fall in services exports upon leaving the EU, new analysis suggests. […]

By Ingo Borchert, Nicolò Tamberi|2025-09-05T12:24:41+01:0011 January 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|4 Comments

Magic realists and economic realists

15 December 2017 Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, and is a member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. The deal done on Friday December 8 in the Brexit negotiations has already been subject to conflicting interpretations. The UK has committed to having no hard border in Ireland, and committed in terms which seem to admit no rowing back. […]

By Alasdair Smith|2025-09-05T12:25:12+01:0015 December 2017|UK- EU|8 Comments

Softer Brexit, Softer Irish border?

8 December 2017 Jim Rollo is Deputy Director of UKTPO, Emeritus Professor of European Economics at the University of Sussex and Associate Fellow, Chatham House. Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO. The agreement to proceed to the next phase of Brexit talks is a step forward on the road to a softer Brexit. But it does not offer a definitive solution to the status of the Irish border, which will depend on the nature of the final agreement on the UK-EU trade relationship. At best, it represents an exercise in constructive ambiguity designed to allow the shape and length of any interim agreement, which will help determine the shape of the long-term agreement and, in turn, will be the basis of any permanent solution to the status of the Irish land border with Northern Ireland. […]

By Jim Rollo, Peter Holmes|2025-09-05T11:53:06+01:008 December 2017|UK- EU|2 Comments

Hard Brexit, soft Border. Some trade implications of the intra-Irish border options.

7 December 2017 Dr Emily Lydgate is a lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. How can the UK uphold its commitment to leaving the EU Single Market and Customs Union while also preserving the invisible intra-Irish border? Leaving aside crucial questions of political feasibility, this post looks at some of the options and their trade and border implications. Notably, there are limits to ‘flexible and creative’ solutions that involve turning a blind eye to customs and regulatory checks solely on the intra-Irish border: trade rules leave little room for such ad hoc approaches. […]

By Emily Lydgate|2025-09-05T11:54:46+01:007 December 2017|UK- EU|2 Comments

With Brexit less than 500 days away, enshrining the Brexit date into law will not provide certainty that consumers and businesses really need.

16 November 207 Ilona Serwicka is Research Fellow in the Economics of Brexit at the UKTPO. The European Chief Negotiator for Brexit, Michel Barnier, has recently confirmed that the UK will cease to be a member of the EU at midnight (Brussels time) on 29 March 2019. This means that we are now less than 500 days and under 350 working days away from the Brexit date. More time has already passed since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union on 23 June 2016. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-11-16T16:22:07+00:0016 November 2017|UK- EU|1 Comment

Will Brexit Raise the Cost of Living?

2 November 2017 Ilona Serwicka is Research Fellow in the Economics of Brexit at the UKTPO. As the United Kingdom is preparing to leave the European Union, Government policy is to seek a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU. But Brexit talks have not moved onto the trade issues yet and even if the future trade relationship is taken up in December, this gives little time and offers no guarantee that an agreement will be reached and ratified before 29 March 2019, the Brexit date. The Government has recently recognised the possibility that talks might break down and started to outline a ‘no deal’ vision of the UK-EU trade. Our analysis reveals that unemployed households, those with children, and pensioners will all fare off worse than average in the case of a ‘no deal’. A new paper, Will Brexit Raise the Cost of Living? by Stephen Clarke, Ilona Serwicka and L. Alan Winters, and published by the National Institute Economic Review, looks at the impact that imposing Most Favoured Nation (MFN) tariffs on UK imports from the EU would have on the price of goods sold in the UK and the average cost of living. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-11-02T16:53:35+00:002 November 2017|UK- EU|3 Comments

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