So I have a feeling many companies are in for a rude awakening this month - the first round of supplementary customs declarations for companies importing from the EU
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Thanks to the UK Gov's easements there was an option to defer customs declarations for the first 6 months and submit the bare minimum of data at the time of import (usually done by the carrier, logistics provider)
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This was to be followed by a full, supplementary declaration up to 175 days later.
While I have often said that I don't believe the pandemic will significantly shift supply chains (which are formed as a response to costs, availability, taxes and a number of other factors) I was thinking it's likely to impact the approach to inventory management.
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The authors are equally sceptical about "supply chain resilience" but go even further when it comes to assessing the likelihood of impact on the type of inventory management - expanding storage space and increasing your inventory costs money.
While this focuses on the WTO, obviously parallels can be drawn between the WTO transparency debate, the wider transparency in trade debate and the recent discussions around the UK's trade strategy (FTA talks).
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I think when it comes to transparency in trade a question that's more important than "should we?" is "how to?".
But I also remember where we were in the Brexit debate around the same time and I think the potential impact, scope and trade-offs related to FTAs might not have been fully understood.
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To be fair, I recently had an opportunity to ask a few companies about their interest in and "wish list" for these FTAs (not a representative sample) and the interest and level of engagement was really low.
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