Thread by @BestForBritain

🔴 LIVE: International Trade Committee - until 5pm

We will bring you the highlights from this important oral evidence session.

Participants:

Dr Meredith Crowley - Reader in International Economics at University of Cambridge @MeredithCrowle1

Dr Peter Holmes - Reader in Economics at University of Sussex

Dr Sheila Lawlor - Director at Politeia @lawlorsheila

John Dickerman - Head of US Office at Confederation of British Industry (CBI)

Rosa Crawford - Policy Officer at Trades Union Congress @Rosa_Crawford

Nick von Westenholz - Director of EU Exit and International Trade at National Farmers Union (NFU) @nvonwestenholz

Dr Meredith Crowley: There will be a -4.9% reduction to UK GDP in the event of a simple FTA with EU compared to its relationship with the EU now

- UK pursuing strategy to pursue bilateral agreement with bilateral partners

- One concern regarding future trading goods, is that the US for example tend to negotiate with trading blocks => it is shown that participating in a trading block is more beneficial

- UK could have asked to joint US-Canada-Mexico as a group

“All economists forecasts predict a decrease in the UK’s GDP in the next 10years…. This is because any departure will have a negative impact on british business”

Dr Sheila Lawlor - Politeia, speaks on US trade deal:

”with the US, one thing which hasn’t come up but should come up, is that we have within the proposed FTA, a set chapter covering financial services”

says this is something the govt has been too relaxed with so far

The UK should propose services deal as a very important part of any trade deals @lawlorsheila

Dr Peter Holmes responds

‘The US is our largest non EU trading partner….but i think there are a lot of problems in the kind of agreement, I think mutual recognition is incredibly hard to get…’

He goes on to say that the United States believes what’s in WTO should be enough to guarantee access to US and that it's "going to be tough for the UK to get anything binding and mutual recognition"

Q: How feasible/desirable is it to reach a quick FTA with the US?

Dr Meredith Crowley: "I’m quite sceptical of the value of a deal concluded before november this year”

After november we will have more idea whether Trump is re-elected or not

If new administration more committed to WTO than Trump, not much incentive for a UK deal

Q: How will UK-US negotiations impact UK-EU negotiations as well as UK-Japan and UK-Aus?

Dr Sheila Lawlor: "I would like all trade deals to be stressing the importance of services"

"without that theres it too much uncertainty for our providers"

"originally the UK who led the way on standards…."

Dr Peter Holmes: "I think there is an interact between those deals...

The japanese have made it very clear that a Japan-UK deal depends very much on a UK-EU deal (car industry) -

if UK-EU relations v limited - the japanese will have much less interest in us and we will have to make a lot more concessions..."

Dr Meredith Crowley speaks on the UK-Japan relationship.

"the UK serves as a major exporter to the EU market, they want to keep the UK in EU supply chain"

Q: Do you think a no deal with the Eu could finish any UK-Japan?

Dr Meredith Crowley @MeredithCrowle1:

’It becomes more complicated. I think there are still other scopes of the economy that could benefit from an agreement...

...Gradually, Japanese firms that want to sell in EU market would slowly decrease investment in UK and find new plants in EU countries"

"It will be very important for the UK to have a good deal with the EU to keep a vibrant triangle with Japan"

Q: It's been reported that the US has asked the UK to sign a clause that would prevent them trading with China/striking an agreement? Is that something the UK should consider?

A: Dr Sheila Lawlor: "How much reliance do we want to place on one market and one country who isn’t a transparent economy and is slightly unpredictable?...

We need to have a debate and a policy...

I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that…"

A: Dr Peter Holmes: "The US negotiating objectives make it very clear that the US reserve the right of action in this agreement if the UK was to sign an agreement with China"

- Obama was already conditioning TTIP on EU FP towards China

- The draft negotiating guidelines say that the US should be able to pull out if any concerns

- The direct economic benefit of a FTA with China is quite small but we are placing ourselves in a situation where would let the ‘force majeure’ of the US make that decision for us

Dr Meredith Crowley raises US concerns regarding technology spying
"I think the US is becoming increasingly aggressive"

There is a worry that US technology making its way in UK would then get to China - a spillover effect they want to avoid

Meredith says the US hasn’t forbidden the UK from trading with China, but wants to be notified if that’s the case for security reasons

"I think this is going to be an issue"

"There is an opportunity for the UK to grow relationship with China but how do you balance that with UK / US / EU relations?"

Q: To what extent do you believe the govt is assessing the impact? talking about latest govt assessment

A: Dr Peter Holmes: "the numbers are more or less what you’d expect"

A: Dr Sheila Lawlor: "I don’t know whether the predictions were rather upbeat or downbeat but we will have to review those with the current economic shock"

🔴 LIVE: the panel now changes

John Dickerman - Head of US Office at Confederation of British Industry (CBI)

Rosa Crawford - Policy Officer at Trades Union Congress
@Rosa_Crawford

Nick von Westenholz - Director of EU Exit & Int Trade at NFU@ nvonwestenholz

John Dickerman : "I think there’s a huge amount of opportunities

Especially in areas of trade (data flows, AI…) that haven’t been regulated by trade agreements previously

There are trade offs too in areas such as agriculture and healthcare so certainly from a public perspective, they are a risk

Those risks need to be traded off"

TUC's @Rosa_Crawford: "for the union movement we see significant risk in the UK-US trade deal outlined"

- Workers rights, privacy, protections….

"UK refusing EU protections for workers, low barriers on service trade etc would mean we are able to save millions of jobs as we recover from a pandemic...

...but instead of negotiating with the EU to seal that deal, the UK is saying it would rather pursue an agreement with the US on terms that, as i have said, have considerable concerns for our membership"

Rosa Crawford continues: "In the event of a UK-US trade deal, the US will see any workers protections as a trade to barrier and will try to overcome them"

"A whole range of threats to social rights and standards more generally" talking about any US trade deal with the UK.

Nick von Westenholz - Director of EU Exit and International Trade at National Farmers Union (NFU)
@nvonwestenholz

"We certainly do have some concerns...but we see opportunities as well too"

"With regards to dairy products and pork - we could increase our imports

- I get very concerned that we talk up the prospect of selling huge amount of beef or lamb - these will be modest"

Nick von Westenholz from continues: "Agriculture does face some significant risks and threats from this deal and i hope our negotiators are very aware of these"

"None of those, even collectively will make up for the significant damage...that will cause a very hard exit from the transition which will cause significant barriers overnight" @nvonwestenholz @NFUtweets

Q: How happy are you with the UK’s negotiating objectives?

A: Nick von Westenholz: "I think, broadly we were reasonably happy with the negotiating objectives...the commitment to uphold our standards of production, not just around food safety but around animal and environmental welfare which is important...

...Objectives are fine but we’ll see what happens to these objectives in the next weeks"

A: Rosa Crawford says @The_TUC were NOT consulted on those negotiating objectives

- Didn’t have an input, regret the fact that there was no consultation

(continues)

- An engagement with unions would NOT have come out with the negotiating objectives it did because we would have pointed them out as threat

- There is nothing in UK-US to reassure us that there will be protections

- In a number of states there are no rights for workers

- This means significant pressure for those rights to be reduced in the UK

- The fact that services will be included on a negative list basis, this means that public services aren’t protected.
And the NHS isn’t. @Rosa_Crawford

Q: How effective has the govt been in identifying any potential impacts of a UK-US deal?

A: Rosa Crawford says factoring a potential no-deal with EU isn’t taken into account...

...and the issue about rights and differing standards in the US (how we regulate our public services, social and quality standards )

The calculus at the moment, in terms of negotiating power, is that we are currently much more likely to have to accept a 'Trump deal'.

A: Nick von Westenholz says "public assessment was quite thin"

and goes on to say "red meat is being spoken out - there are opportunities but they are pretty modest and aren’t properly reflected in the paper...

...This comes down to honesty and the economy and identifying comparable advantage and trade offs, looking at sectors that will be most affected by it...

... at the moment this sounds like it will be a ‘win for everybody’ -not the case, a win in a sector is a lose in another."

John Dickerman speaks on the impact of UK-US and leaving EU on CBI members

"The gains are not going to be huge but a gain is a gain" and clarified that any elimination of tariffs is a gain but that there will be "significant tradeoffs sectorally".

Rosa Crawford @rosa_crawford points out that "UK-US tariffs are already low"

"The damage that would be done from not getting a deal with the EU and just have a tariff reduction in UK-US would be a terrible situation for workers already suffering"

Rosa goes on to say that due to proximity "UK-US tariffs reduction not comparable to UK-EU" and says the priority should be a good deal with the EU, certainly not any deal with the US/Trump administration

@nvonwestenholz from @NFUtweets: "We shouldn’t be trying to secure a deal at all costs just for the political price, in fact we should focus on the economic price"

"We should be willing to walk away"

"EU deal equally important, tariffs would be greatly damaging"

"Standards are not just an EU thing’ - the fact we don’t sell more lamb to the US is because we are NOT allowed to. 5y ago we were told we would be allowed to but that rule still hasn’t been removed!

And we should be careful that this will not be used as leverage for the UK to make concessions." says Nick von Westenholz.

John Dickerman of @CBItweets says there is huge amount of interest in maintaining investment relationship between US-UK. Because of that reciprocity and long standing trade and investment relationship, we believe that there is absolutely opportunity for UK to liberalise access.

"One thing that all too often is neglected is how much power governors/mayors have - how do we transfer some of the discussions from the federal level down to the sub federal level?"

Nick von Westenholz: "@NFUtweets position is that where we liberalise further, we do so carefully"

and goes on to say there are worries around food standards in UK-US scenario where food becomes cheaper.

"I absolutely agree there is a problem with food poverty… the price of food isn’t the problem, income etc is... Food prices isn’t necessarily going to change the life of those people... You could knock a little bit of food price but considerably damage British farming"

Rosa Crawford from @The_TUC points out that Canadian trade unions have had to lower their standards due to NAFTA, and worries this will be the case for the UK

🔴 LIVE: International Trade Committee - until 5pm

We're nearly coming to the end of this committee and the panel will now discuss inclusion of digital services.

John Dickerman from @CBItweets says there are clear concerns about how data privacy and protection is preserved in the US.

Rosa Crawford @The_TUC says they also have concerns about the inclusion of digital services

"This leads to workers rights issues because we know that there is already too much surveillance of workers and if there is a further erosion of how that data is protected...

...there is a risk that companies could abuse the data to discriminate against certain employees for example. We know this already happens."

Rosa goes on to talk about patient data in the event of a UK-US trade deal:

"NHS database could be subject to liberalisation which would again reduce our ability to control that data and patients’ data - completely undermining that this is a public service"

The final question was "What are your organisations expecting as a GDP gain for any UK-US deal?" but no conclusive answers were provided.

🔴 LIVE: International Trade Committee - until 5pm

That ends the committee. Thanks to @Aliceantoineg and @calroscow for reporting.