22 May 2024 David Henig is Director of the UK Trade Policy Project at the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE). He has written extensively on the development of UK Trade Policy post Brexit, in the context of developments in EU and global trade policy on which he also researches and writes. L. Alan Winters is Co-Director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP) and former Director of the UKTPO. One of the most heralded claims for Brexit was taking back control of UK international trade policy. Four years later, this is not widely seen as having been a success. Trade growth has been disappointing, the UK has become less open, exporting is still heavily concentrated in the Southeast of England, and there is little trust in Government pronouncements on trade. And yet there is almost no coherent discussion of trade policy and no evident strategy guiding future policy objectives or the signature of new trade agreements. Part of the issue is that thinking about trade policy is trapped in the remnants of the Brexit debate and substantially seen in party political terms; it is consequently lacking any broadly accepted understanding. This is unsatisfactory and as part of [...]

June 21 2023 Peter Holmes is a Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and Emeritus Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex Business School. Guillermo Larbalestier is Research Assistant in International Trade at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO. This is an extract from a paper first published on The Review Of European Law journal on may 5, 2023. To read it in its entirety, click here. In the extract below we suggest that there are few trade benefits to be had. Is there something else that enhances economic viability? Is it as “regulatory sandboxes”? The present regulations require adherence to international environmental and financial standards. So what about R&D? There are some wind turbine, carbon capture and “Green Hydrogen” projects but not much linkage to Freeports.  We don’t address the recent accusations of financial irregularities, yet clearly, property speculation is the other way to profit. […]