Four years on from the UK’s departure from the European Union, the government has yet to produce a trade strategy. This is a unique opportunity

While the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement includes the fight against climate change as an essential element and reaffirms commitment to the 1.5oC target in the Paris Agreement, there is no mention of this target in the UK-Australia FTA. [...] The statutory scrutiny committees, including the former International Trade Committee (ITC) and the International Agreements Committee (IAC), have made this recommendation repeatedly in their assessments of new FTAs signed since leaving the EU.8,9 In their report on the recent UK-Australia FTA, the IAC summarised the issue well, stating that “it is regrettable that the agreement cannot be placed w. [...] This will enable trade policy to be understood in relation to other policy priorities, to see how government assesses the impacts and trade- offs of trade liberalisation, to set the Negotiating Objectives in context, and to inform public consultation and Parliamentary scrutiny.”10 The development of the government’s 2018 White Paper showed the breadth and depth of public interest in the shaping of. [...] Any trade strategy should also build in regular opportunities for review and revision to ensure it remains fit for purpose and responds to an up-to-date picture of the nature of the UK’s trading relationships and the state of geopolitics. [...] For example, the UK Trade Policy Observatory has published a report on a comprehensive UK green trade strategy, which sets out the range of options available to align UK trade policy with domestic environmental objectives, and the Climate and Trade Commission has proposed developing a strategic climate and trade policy.11,12 A UK trade strategy should: 1.