"If the UK left the EU, it could decide not to sign trade deals with some of the developing Commonwealth countries that the EU has signed deals with. It could also offer a more generous version of unilateral trade preferences. However, the UK would not be free to sign deals for one-way trade liberalisation, since it would be bound by the same WTO rules on trade agreements that the EU breached when it signed those deals. Moreover, while not replacing the EU’s trade deals would arguably help the poorest countries’ economies, UK exports to those States would logically be lower.
The second argument is that the EU’s trade deals are a problem for the environment and public services, and give industry overly generous intellectual property protection, with the result (for instance) that prices of basic medicines rise due to extended patent protection. But this argument is equally made against many trade deals that the EU is not a party to at all – such as the recent Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.
So, while (stepping outside the Commonwealth for a moment) the planned EU/US trade agreement, known as TTIP, has attracted critics concerned about its effect upon the UK’s health care (among many other things), those issues would not magically go away if the UK, having left the EU, sought to negotiate its own trade agreement with the USA instead. The controversial parts of the draft deal are surely attractive to the US side as well as the EU side; it’s not as if the EU is in a position to issue non-negotiable demands to desperate, poverty-stricken Americans.
The third argument is that the EU is not sufficiently interested in pursuing trade deals. As the facts discussed above show, it’s quite false to suggest that the EU is not interested in trade deals with Commonwealth countries, or that the UK’s EU membership makes it impossible for British businesses to increase their exports to those countries. But could it be argued that the UK alone would do a better job of negotiating such trade deals, and negotiating them more quickly, after Brexit?
It’s true that it often takes years to negotiate EU trade agreements, and that some negotiations stall or slow down to a snail’s pace (with India, for instance). But this is not unique to the EU. Over twenty years ago, for instance, the Clinton administration developed a plan for a ‘Free Trade Area of the Americas’ – but it has never come to full fruition, and talks eventually fizzled out. There’s no guarantee that the UK alone would be able to reach agreements more quickly than the EU as a whole.
In any event, as noted above, the EU already has agreed trade deals with 64% of Commonwealth countries, and is negotiating with another 26%. Some of the latter negotiations are likely to be completed by the time that Brexit took place – since that would probably happen two years after the referendum date, so likely in 2018 or 2019 (for more discussion of the process of withdrawal from the EU, see here).
So the UK would have to ask perhaps three-quarters of its Commonwealth partners for trade deals to replace those already agreed with the EU. They might agree quickly to extend to the UK a parallel version of their existing arrangement with the EU, since that would not really change the status quo. But they might not be interested in negotiating any further trade liberalisation. If they are interested, they will ask for concessions in return, and this will take time to negotiate.
For the remaining one-quarter or so of states, the UK will have to start negotiations from scratch, in some cases having to catch up with EU negotiations that are already underway. And there is no guarantee that these other states will want to discuss FTAs, or that negotiations would be successful.
Overall then, there’s no certainty that UK exports to the Commonwealth would gain from Brexit. They might even drop, if some Commonwealth countries aren’t interested in replicating the EU’s trade agreements. Alternatively, they might increase – but it’s hard to see how any gain in British exports would be enormous, given the existence of so many FTAs between the EU and Commonwealth countries already, and the uncertainty of those states’ willingness to renegotiate those deals.
Could this very hypothetical increase in exports to the Commonwealth make up for any loss in UK exports to the EU following Brexit? Obviously, this assessment depends on how Brexit would affect UK/EU trade relations. That’s a hugely complex subject, which I will return to another day, but suffice it to say that while I think a UK/EU trade deal after Brexit is likely, it’s far from guaranteed. And it’s hugely unlikely that any such trade deal would retain 100% of the UK’s access to the EU market. There are many reasons to doubt this could happen, but first and foremost: why would the EU send the signal that a Member State could leave the EU but retain all of its trade access? If it did that, the EU would be signing its own death warrant.
The key fact to keep in mind here is that the UK’s trade with the Commonwealth is less than one-quarter of its trade with the EU. So to make up for even a 10% drop in exports to the EU, the UK would have to increase exports to the Commonwealth by more than 40%. How likely is that, when the vast majority of trade between the EU and the Commonwealth would already be covered by FTAs at that point?
Taken as a whole then, it’s clear that the UK can remain a member of the EU and trade with the Commonwealth – and that this trade will only increase in future as more EU FTAs with Commonwealth states come into force or are negotiated. Leaving the EU, on the other hand, is liable to lead to reduction in trade with the remaining EU without any plausible likelihood that trade with the Commonwealth would increase by anything near the level necessary to compensate."
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/10/the-commonwealth-and-the-eu-lets-do-trade-with-both/
The second argument is that the EU’s trade deals are a problem for the environment and public services, and give industry overly generous intellectual property protection, with the result (for instance) that prices of basic medicines rise due to extended patent protection. But this argument is equally made against many trade deals that the EU is not a party to at all – such as the recent Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.
So, while (stepping outside the Commonwealth for a moment) the planned EU/US trade agreement, known as TTIP, has attracted critics concerned about its effect upon the UK’s health care (among many other things), those issues would not magically go away if the UK, having left the EU, sought to negotiate its own trade agreement with the USA instead. The controversial parts of the draft deal are surely attractive to the US side as well as the EU side; it’s not as if the EU is in a position to issue non-negotiable demands to desperate, poverty-stricken Americans.
The third argument is that the EU is not sufficiently interested in pursuing trade deals. As the facts discussed above show, it’s quite false to suggest that the EU is not interested in trade deals with Commonwealth countries, or that the UK’s EU membership makes it impossible for British businesses to increase their exports to those countries. But could it be argued that the UK alone would do a better job of negotiating such trade deals, and negotiating them more quickly, after Brexit?
It’s true that it often takes years to negotiate EU trade agreements, and that some negotiations stall or slow down to a snail’s pace (with India, for instance). But this is not unique to the EU. Over twenty years ago, for instance, the Clinton administration developed a plan for a ‘Free Trade Area of the Americas’ – but it has never come to full fruition, and talks eventually fizzled out. There’s no guarantee that the UK alone would be able to reach agreements more quickly than the EU as a whole.
In any event, as noted above, the EU already has agreed trade deals with 64% of Commonwealth countries, and is negotiating with another 26%. Some of the latter negotiations are likely to be completed by the time that Brexit took place – since that would probably happen two years after the referendum date, so likely in 2018 or 2019 (for more discussion of the process of withdrawal from the EU, see here).
So the UK would have to ask perhaps three-quarters of its Commonwealth partners for trade deals to replace those already agreed with the EU. They might agree quickly to extend to the UK a parallel version of their existing arrangement with the EU, since that would not really change the status quo. But they might not be interested in negotiating any further trade liberalisation. If they are interested, they will ask for concessions in return, and this will take time to negotiate.
For the remaining one-quarter or so of states, the UK will have to start negotiations from scratch, in some cases having to catch up with EU negotiations that are already underway. And there is no guarantee that these other states will want to discuss FTAs, or that negotiations would be successful.
Overall then, there’s no certainty that UK exports to the Commonwealth would gain from Brexit. They might even drop, if some Commonwealth countries aren’t interested in replicating the EU’s trade agreements. Alternatively, they might increase – but it’s hard to see how any gain in British exports would be enormous, given the existence of so many FTAs between the EU and Commonwealth countries already, and the uncertainty of those states’ willingness to renegotiate those deals.
Could this very hypothetical increase in exports to the Commonwealth make up for any loss in UK exports to the EU following Brexit? Obviously, this assessment depends on how Brexit would affect UK/EU trade relations. That’s a hugely complex subject, which I will return to another day, but suffice it to say that while I think a UK/EU trade deal after Brexit is likely, it’s far from guaranteed. And it’s hugely unlikely that any such trade deal would retain 100% of the UK’s access to the EU market. There are many reasons to doubt this could happen, but first and foremost: why would the EU send the signal that a Member State could leave the EU but retain all of its trade access? If it did that, the EU would be signing its own death warrant.
The key fact to keep in mind here is that the UK’s trade with the Commonwealth is less than one-quarter of its trade with the EU. So to make up for even a 10% drop in exports to the EU, the UK would have to increase exports to the Commonwealth by more than 40%. How likely is that, when the vast majority of trade between the EU and the Commonwealth would already be covered by FTAs at that point?
Taken as a whole then, it’s clear that the UK can remain a member of the EU and trade with the Commonwealth – and that this trade will only increase in future as more EU FTAs with Commonwealth states come into force or are negotiated. Leaving the EU, on the other hand, is liable to lead to reduction in trade with the remaining EU without any plausible likelihood that trade with the Commonwealth would increase by anything near the level necessary to compensate."
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/10/the-commonwealth-and-the-eu-lets-do-trade-with-both/
