Worth a look at @tradegovuk’s further consultation on what current EU trade remedies should be maintained once the U.K. operates its own trade policy. gov.uk/government/con…
The paper records that of the 114 existing EU trade remedies measures, only 47 received any support from U.K. producers for their maintenance. (It’s of course possible that some of the affected industries haven’t got their act together, or couldn’t be bothered at this stage.)
There are then cases in which the level of producer support wasn’t enough to meet either the test for the proportion of U.K. production required to support trade remedies, or the market share proportion required.
That left 42 that seemed to be ones where there’s a case for continued remedies.
NB that would mean that as soon as we have a new regime current trade remedies in a wide range of products (including eg solar panels from 🇨🇳 and bicycles from a list of countries including 🇨🇳) would vanish.
Need to remember, though, that all of this is a bit subjunctive.
The paper itself records that during the implementation period and during the subsequent proposed temporary customs union there will be no separate U.K. trade remedies policy: we will still be part of the EU’s.
The paper goes on to recite the proposed facilitated customs arrangement as proposed in Chequers as the long term customs arrangement with the EU.
This bit is unconvincing since it fails to deal with the serious practical problems of running an independent trade remedies policy under the FCA.
See the @uk_tpo piece that I discussed here.
Key points made there: any divergence of tariffs under the FCA creates incentives to cheat. And since different trade remedies mean very large tariff differences there will be huge incentives to cheat.
Those problems are particularly acute for intermediate products (eg aspartame (sweetener) - a product subject to current EU trade remedies which would not be maintained).
That’s because they will be incorporated into other products (food/drink) some of which will be exported to the EU.
Ensuring that the aspartame landed in the U.K and subjected to the EU anti dumping duty but incorporated into exports to the EU doesn’t get any refund under the FCA will pose serious enforcement problems (and a large amount of paperwork/arithmetic).
And where the UK imposes anti dumping duty but the EU doesn’t (or a sets a lower rate) those problems are worse: there’ll be no check at the EU/UK border and the U.K. will have to rely on “behind the border” enforcement to deal with dumped products brought into the UK via the EU.
Further issues: where a product subject to EU anti-dumping duty but not UK ADD arrives in the UK, the UK will have to interpret and apply the EU legislation at the border. But what if the importer disputes the interpretation?
UK courts would have to rule on the interpretation of EU regulations: but with no means of referring the matter to the ECJ (and no formal requirement to be bound by ECJ case law).
That can’t be acceptable to the EU, as a diverging interpretation would be a breach in the EU’s external wall (and would be exploited at once if it gave scope for tariff avoidance).
We have yet to hear any explanation from the Government as to how these matters are supposed to work. But until they are explained, it’s hard to be confident that the FCA is in practice compatible with an independent U.K. trade remedy policy./ends
