Thread by @CoppetainPU

This thread looks at Professor David Collins @davidcollinslaw's article claiming the UK will be fine with no deal with the EU next March. I’m going to stick to the facts, particularly about the WTO and what WTO agreements do and do not say.

1/17

https://twitter.com/davidcollinslaw/status/1025059964245696512

In short, Prof Collins doesn’t understand the WTO’s SPS, TBT and Trade Facilitation Agreements, and the UK’s WTO schedules of commitments.

1st Paragraph👇🏽: no comment, it’s polemical:

2/17

The point about “crashing out” is not just whether WTO terms are fine, but the large adjustment needed if the UK moves from one situation to the other.

With “no deal” that means overnight.

There will be winners and losers. An abrupt change makes losses more severe

3/17

Whether or not the WTO’s achievement since it was set up in 1995 represents “huge progress” is a matter of opinion.

4/17

No dispute in this👇🏽 except to say the average of tariffs says little about the wide range of tariffs in different sectors. Agriculture, processed food, the auto sector, clothing and others have higher than average tariffs

5/17

This is a serious mistake. The WTO’s SPS and TBT agreements would not prohibit anything of the kind.

The agreements encourage countries to align/harmonise/recognise their standards and regulations but cannot force any WTO member to do that.

6/17

The reasons why Prof Collins has misinterpreted the two WTO agreements are explained in this article blogs.sussex.ac.uk/uktpo/2018/08/…

No one who has defended Prof Collins has explained why they think he’s right

7/17

This is another serious mistake. The Trade Facilitation Agreement’s obligations on frictionless borders contain the frequent use of “where practicable, where available, etc”. In other words, these provisions are objectives, not binding and cannot be enforced.

8/17

Some other provisions are binding but not these. The text of the Trade Facilitation Agreement can be found here, along with summaries of each provision: tfafacility.org/trade-facilita…

9/17

Some more polemic, this time about vague economic gains and pro-competitive environments, and it assumes no winners and losers.

10/17

“Leadership” and “champion” are polemical. But leading the Trade in Services Agreement talks assumes (1) other members (US, EU, Canada, Australia, etc) want to be led by the UK, (2) the talks progress — they’re stalled. We can treat Azevêdo’s comment as being diplomatic

11/17

Rolling over the EU’s free trade agreements is not as straightforward as it sounds, will require renegotiation, will probably need the EU to be involved as well if "triangular cumulation of origin" is needed, and will take time. So, full value is not guaranteed.

12/17

This is largely speculation about what the UK can negotiate. Many others have written about this, but just to note that the EU’s failure to reach agreement with the US and India, and the reason it hasn’t started with China, are more than just the ratification process.

13/17

Why? Hopefully because the government realises how damaging the shock caused by re-orienting the economy overnight will be

14/17

Most would argue that since the EU is bigger than the UK, it's the UK that has more to lose.

In any case, this paragraph admits that a free trade agreement with the EU is better than a no-deal WTO option.

15/17

Amazingly, Prof Collins doesn’t seem to know what the UK’s schedules of commitments are. They must done anyway so the UK can be an independent WTO member, EU deal or no EU deal.

And not just tariffs: TRQs, farm subsidies, services.

An explanation tradebetablog.wordpress.com/2017/02/04/aft…

16/17

Most reports don’t agree with the claim above that the ports are being built up.

And the concluding paragraph below doesn’t hold since so much was wrong about the WTO in the rest of the piece.

And then there are areas the WTO doesn't cover at all: aviation, isotopes, etc

17/17