What Does the UK’s Trade Policy Report Card Look Like? - By Stuart Harbinson,

So, three years on, how has the UK fared? ENORMOUS GEOPOLITICAL CHALLENGES… Any fair assessment would have to start with the enormous challenges the world trading system has faced in recent years – the pandemic disrupting supply chains, the US-China trade war, the real war in Ukraine, and the growing feeling throughout the West that trade and globalisation are to blame for growing inequality. [...] Trade relationship with the EU Although one of the stated aims of Brexit was to widen and customise the UK’s trading relationships with the world, geography dictates that the relationship with the EU remains pivotal to its future economic success. [...] One of the most resonating issues at the WTO in recent times has been the clash, in the context of the pandemic, between developed country proponents of intellectual property rights and a large number of developing countries proposing a waiver from those rights for the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19. [...] The name of the game, if you want to be included with the big players in the WTO, is to demonstrate either that you bring something extra to the table in terms of expertise and being able to construct a consensus, or that you have a credible veto. [...] SO WHAT’S THE SCORE? Several realities have struck home on the newly ‘independent’ UK trade policy: in particular the reality of a completely changed geopolitical environment; the reality that international trade policy is a sensitive domestic political issue; and the reality that - particularly when you live next door to a behemoth like the EU - you have no right to a place at the top table but h.