This is an interesting piece by @snlester for @UKTradeForum suggesting that the EU and UK agree that trade remedies as between them be decided by a joint tribunal and not by their domestic trade remedy systems. uktradeforum.net/2020/01/16/the…
(For a “Trade 101” explanation of trade remedies see uktradeforum.net/2017/10/10/tra…).
That would be an improvement on the “consult the other side before imposing remedies” rules and agreement on eg the lesser duty rule europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document… that you find in the Arts 46ff EU/Ukraine DCFTA. trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/20…
In my view, though, the ambition should be to eliminate all trade remedies as between the EU and UK: a bilateral agreed disarmament, if you like.
There’s a non-EU precedent: Australia and New Zealand agreed in 1990 not to impose anti-dumping or safeguard duties on each other: both accepted that they had effective competition regimes that should avoid the need for such measures.
And the EEA Agreement has a trade remedy disarmament rule for all products covered by the Agreement. (More or less everything except fish and some agri products.)
Indeed, such disarmament would be a corollary of the EU’s insistence on level playing commitments including (in particular) State aid and competition rules. If UK and EU subsidies are both controlled by EU State aid rules, why would either side need countervailing measures?
And note that even the Conservatives’ proposals for a new domestic anti-subsidy regime seemed to indicate that subsidies as defined in WTO law (the sort that give rise to countervailing measures) would be prohibited in domestic law. See uksala.org/conservative-p….
(NB my critique of that proposal here: prospectmagazine.co.uk/economics-and-….)
