Today's Brexit topic. Geographical Indications. Parmesan cheese, Cornish Pasties. Politico has the story of the UK finding a secret Brexit weapon. The story is incomplete. 1/ politico.eu/article/uk-sec…
Geographical Indications are almost certainly the EU's top trade policy success story of recent years. It isn't always easy to point to where trade policy has had clear success on the ground, but in this case we can. See for example strength2food.eu/2018/02/16/tra… 2/ 
This GI spread has particularly been noticed by the US. Indeed it was Politico who wrote a very good story on this last year. In included a reference to a very interesting letter by US agricultural producers. 3/ politico.eu/article/europe… nmpf.org/files/files/Le…
The US response to the EU spread of GIs has been to propose mechanisms where these can be reviewed and potentially rejected. This was announced as a US success in the US-Mexico / NAFTA update announced earlier this week 4/ ustr.gov/about-us/polic…
We have already seen something similar in the Trans Pacific Partnership, so the US could have already had protection against Geographical Indications had they not withdrawn from TPP... 5/
This of course brings the GI story back to the UK. We are consulting now on a trade agreement with the US and joining TPP. Which would mean accepting US proposals to limit GIs. On the other hand we rather like our own GIs, especially Scotch... 6/
So the GI story actually does not start as an attempt to win leverage from the EU in negotiations, it starts with the UK trying to both profit from GIs and still be open to a US trade deal - and this as we have seen is a big issue for the US 7/ (clip from White paper)
Now the EU are well aware of the UK / US positions, and have been ahead of the game (story Sept 2017). Hence asking for GI protection in the Withdrawal Agreement as Intellectual Property protection, rather than leaving it to the trade deal. 8/ euractiv.com/section/agricu…
So back to the story, does the UK have leverage? Yes, we can get a price from the EU to accept GIs in the Withdrawal Agreement. But at the potential cost of the US trade deal. This is the politics of trade agreements. Choose wisely. 9/ ends
PS GI Friday apparently...
PPS This is interesting from @APHClarkson on the same subject...
And this deserves to be added to the thread, an addition to the very small number of trade jokes
