24 March 2019

Business Insider: Brexit trade deals will be worse than current EU deals, says Liam Fox's former trade chief

Countries are likely to offer the United Kingdom worse trade deals than it currently enjoys as an EU member, the former head of Liam Fox's International Trade Department has told Business Insider.

Sir Martin Donnelly, who was the Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Trade until 2017, said that the UK could offer less market access as an individual country than as part the EU, and would therefore be offered less favourable terms when negotiating free trade arrangements after Brexit.

"The United Kingdom alone can offer significantly less in terms of market access or government procurement than can all of the European Union," Donnelly said.

"That means that other countries are less likely to offer us the same deal because they don't get the same benefits," he added.

"Trade negotiators are not sentimental, they look for reciprocity of benefits."

[...] major trading partners of the UK including Japan have indicated that they will seek tougher concessions from the UK in trade talks than it secured from the EU when they agreed the terms of a free trade deal in 2018.

Japanese trade negotiators are confident they can extract better terms, the Financial Times reported, a sign of how difficult Fox's task may be in attempting to strike independent trade deals once the UK has left the EU.

"By negotiating as a country of 65 million, we start in a significantly less attractive position than when we are a part of a bloc of around 500 million," Donnelly told BI.

"That's what's coming back to us from the negotiations, and that is not surprising."

He said the lack of clarity around the government's trade policy once it has left the EU would act as an impediment to striking liberal trade deals because foreign companies would demand certainty about the UK's trading arrangements on issues including rules of origin.

"Once you include issues like rules of origin, it becomes more complicated for their companies.

"They want to know if they're based in the UK can they still be part of a European supply chain, which gets benefits from EU trade deals, or not?"[...]

Full article on Business Insider

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