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Even by the standards of articles at Brexit Central this one defending the Department for International Trade is a horror show of snide remarks and basic errors 1/ brexitcentral.com/department-int…
Start with the snide, those doomsayers who are saying each agreement is only a small percentage of trade (which each one is) and the gate doesn't come down after no-deal (yes, but won't be negotiating new deals then?) 2/ 
Other countries are confused you see. Except that these sections are incredibly confused. We're replicating in case of no-deal, and yes other countries may say no because they think they have more leverage in the future. These sentences make no sense at all 3/
For "hostile working environment" read "trade policy business as usual". And the countries that matter? Does Chile matter more for our trade than Mexico? Faroe Islands more than Egypt or Algeria? Tough job, trade negotiation, but this defence is nonsense 4/
Back to the snide, I have to explain how trade works... but this is very partial. On tariffs, a key point is competitiveness compared to others who have a trade deal. And what about services? Or the resolution of market access issues? 5/
There's two basic errors in this paragraph. Tariff cuts with Japan come into force immediately, and the EU-Singapore trade agreement has yet to be implemented. How much trade will be affected - impossible to tell in truth but some companies will be affected 6/
There is a debate to be had on developing countries and UK trade, though given Liam Fox reportedly supports zero tariffs for all, which could significantly affect developing country exports, I'm not sure this has yet been fully understood 7/
We await to see what is in the agreement with EEA, but the UK-Switzerland agreement in case of no-deal Brexit is quite limited as @CoppetainPU has demonstrated 8/
All true and positive. No arguments with this para. 9/
If you read the paragraphs on CPTPP carefully you'll discover that Japan is both in favour of us joining CPTPP and is confused about their position. By now I think any readers will also be confused 10/
With regards to Turkey apparently "It is not news that this particular agreement won’t be rolled over by March 2019". Actually it is, since I don't recall this being said by Liam Fox before this year. In fact Greg Hands said the opposite last year (gov.uk/government/spe…) 11/
The political point. Taking no-deal off the table will mean we lose negotiating leverage with continuity agreements. True, but then if we have a transition agreement we shouldn't need them, so true but confused. 12/
Final point. Competition between continuity agreements and new deals in the case of no-deal Brexit? Is the assumption we can negotiate 30 existing deals and 4 new ones at the same time? Of course trade continues in no-deal, but how will it be affected? No answer. 13/ end
