Global Britain put to the Test

The concept of "Global Britain" emerged as one of the pillars of the United Kingdom's post-Brexit strategy, championed by the government of Theresa May (2016–2019) and subsequently consolidated under Boris Johnson (2019–2022). This vision rested on two major ambitions: regaining autonomy in trade policy in order to diversify the UK's economic partnerships and thereby reduce the impact of Brexit, and strengthening the UK's geopolitical influence outside the European framework. These objectives were presented as a historic opportunity to redefine the country's place in the global economy, drawing in particular on the Commonwealth's legacy, the financial weight of the City of London, and the UK's role in international institutions.

During the 2016 Brexit campaign, supporters of "Leave" had highlighted the difficulties encountered by the European Union's trade agenda, arguing that the United Kingdom had ceded its trade sovereignty to a bloc struggling to achieve concrete results in opening new markets. This reading was subsequently adopted by successive post-Brexit governments under Theresa May[1] and Boris Johnson[2]. On one hand, the EU was criticised for the length of its trade negotiations and the cumbersome signature and ratification processes imposed by EU institutional rules — chief among them the Union's exclusive competence in the area of the common commercial policy (Art. 3§1(e) TFEU), whose modalities and procedures are set out in Article 207 TFEU. The need to reconcile the sometimes divergent interests of EU member states frequently resulted in lengthy negotiations and agreements whose ambitions were progressively diluted in the search for compromise. The failure of TTIP negotiations with the United States in 2016, after three years and fifteen rounds of talks, was regularly cited to illustrate this difficulty. Moreover, even when negotiations concluded successfully, the ratification phase could prove equally complex. The delays surrounding the signing and ratification of CETA with Canada that same year contributed to reinforcing the image of a European trade policy that was unwieldy and slow to respond.

By reclaiming its ability to conduct trade negotiations, in place of the European Commission, the United Kingdom thus aimed to overcome these obstacles and establish itself as a champion of free trade. It sought to sign more trade agreements, more quickly, and to tailor them more effectively to the comparative advantages of the British economy — for example in the areas of services and automotive manufacturing. Indirectly, the deregulation agenda championed by certain Brexit supporters was also intended to ease the task of British negotiators. By breaking free from the European regulatory framework — often perceived as rigid, particularly on issues such as environmental standards (REACH), rules of origin, or sanitary standards — the UK hoped to remove certain obstacles that had complicated discussions with its partners.

As conceptualised in 2021, the "Global Britain"[3] strategy thus aimed to make the United Kingdom a more influential commercial and diplomatic actor on the international stage. Geopolitically, it was intended to demonstrate the country's capacity to define and implement an autonomous trade policy, tailored to its national interests and strategic priorities. Economically, it was meant to help mitigate the effects of leaving the European single market by diversifying the outlets available to British businesses, deepening trade with high-growth economies, and reducing the UK's historical dependence on the European market. The underlying premise was that an autonomous British trade policy would be more agile, better aligned with the opportunities offered by global markets, and ultimately capable of supporting economic growth while strengthening the resilience of the British economy.

Five years after the adoption of the "Global Britain" strategy and six years after the UK's effective departure from the European Union, it is now possible to draw an initial assessment. Two main questions arise. The first concerns the effectiveness of British trade policy as an autonomous instrument: has the United Kingdom succeeded in negotiating agreements more quickly, more effectively, or on more favourable terms than those obtained under the EU's common commercial policy? The second concerns the economic results of this strategy: has the newly recovered trade autonomy succeeded in diversifying British trade and reducing its dependence on the European market, in line with the stated ambitions of Global Britain? To address these questions, this study examines in turn the record of trade negotiations conducted by the United Kingdom since Brexit, and then the evolution of the geography of its external trade.

01 | The United Kingdom as an Independent Negotiator: Between Institutional Achievements and Mixed Results

Five years after the adoption of the "Global Britain" strategy, the United Kingdom can claim to have conducted an exceptionally large number of trade negotiations simultaneously. Caught between the need to preserve agreements inherited from the European Union, the desire to conclude new partnerships, and the ambition to forge privileged relationships with major economic powers, London was forced to manage several dozen negotiations at once — more than forty simultaneously[4]. However, these negotiations neither shared the same objectives nor the same economic and geopolitical stakes.

02 | Preserving the Status Quo: The Continuity Agreements Concluded by the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom first faced the loss of the European Union's network of preferential agreements, which had until Brexit afforded it access to some forty agreements granting preferential access to the markets of more than 70 countries, accounting for 13% of British external trade (including trade with the EU)[5]. The strategy deployed by the United Kingdom to avoid a "cliff-edge" effect — that is, the possibility of a sudden interruption of existing trading arrangements — at the end of the transition period on 30 December 2020, was to offer these partners so-called "continuity" or "roll-over" agreements. This strategy can be considered a success for the United Kingdom, at least in terms of the number of agreements signed: 37 such agreements were concluded, enabling the UK to replicate the essential elements of the network it had enjoyed as an EU member. Only Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro have yet to conclude such agreements.

On a qualitative level, some observers had anticipated that the UK's partners might exploit the continuity negotiations to secure greater concessions than those granted to the European Union, given in particular the size of the British market (69 million consumers), which is considerably smaller than the European market (450 million consumers)[6]. The results of the negotiations suggest, however, that this analysis should be moderated: in the majority of cases, the United Kingdom succeeded in concluding agreements whose content remains very close to that of the agreements negotiated by the European Union.

This assessment must nonetheless be qualified on several points:

• Finally, certain agreements inherited from the pre-Brexit period have since been modernised by the European Union. Since these partners already enjoyed preferential access to the British market through continuity agreements, they showed limited interest in a swift and more ambitious renegotiation of their trade relations with the United Kingdom. This is notably the case for Chile and Mexico, which have each concluded modernised agreements with the European Union offering new market openings — particularly in agriculture — as well as strengthened disciplines in several emerging areas such as critical raw materials.

• In some high-profile agreements, the United Kingdom had to forgo certain market openings in order to reach a continuity agreement within the required timeframe. This is the case, for example, of the tariff-rate quota on cheeses provided for under the EU–CETA agreement, which was not carried over into the continuity agreement concluded between the United Kingdom and Canada.

• Even if the content of the agreements were comparable, it would be difficult to conclude that the United Kingdom enjoys the same trading facilities as when it was a member of the European Union. When it participated in the single market, products incorporating inputs from other member states could benefit from the trade preferences provided for in agreements concluded by the European Union. Since leaving the Union, the rules of origin provide in principle that only products considered to be British within the meaning of the agreements can benefit from preferential tariffs. While the United Kingdom has, in certain agreements — notably with Japan — succeeded in including provisions for cumulation of origin with European inputs, this flexibility remains temporary in some cases and non-existent in others, as in the agreement concluded with Canada[7].

• Finally, certain agreements inherited from the pre-Brexit period have since been modernised by the European Union. Since these partners already enjoyed preferential access to the British market through continuity agreements, they showed limited interest in a swift and more ambitious renegotiation of their trade relations with the United Kingdom. This is notably the case for Chile and Mexico, which have each concluded modernised agreements with the European Union offering new market openings — particularly in agriculture — as well as strengthened disciplines in several emerging areas such as critical raw materials.

02 | Conquering New Markets: A Comparison That Favours the European Union

Beyond preserving the network of agreements inherited from the European Union, the "Global Britain" strategy also aimed to demonstrate the United Kingdom's ability to conclude new trade agreements with strategic partners outside Europe. On this front, the record appears more mixed.

In six years of trade autonomy, the United Kingdom has concluded four genuinely new trade agreements: a free trade agreement with Australia (2021), a free trade agreement with New Zealand (2022), its accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which entered into force in 2024, and a free trade agreement with India (2025).

By comparison, since Brexit, the European Union has also faced a challenging trading environment, combining the blockage of commercial multilateralism, the introduction of protectionist policies by President Trump, and the tightening of market access barriers by China. In response, it has adopted a highly proactive policy of concluding trade agreements. In addition to the modernised agreements with Chile and Mexico mentioned above, the EU has also succeeded in finalising agreements with New Zealand (2023), Australia (2026), India (2026), Kenya (2023), Indonesia (2025), and above all with Mercosur (2025), the latter arguably representing the EU's most significant trade achievement since Brexit, opening the way to an agreement covering a heavily protected market of more than 270 million inhabitants in South America.

In terms of the economic coverage of the new trade agreements, the comparison also favours the European Union. On one hand, the left-hand chart highlights a significant gap in the size of the markets potentially covered by the new agreements. Between 2020 and 2026, the European Union concluded or modernised agreements with partners whose combined GDP in 2023 (nearly USD 10,100 billion) exceeds the combined GDP of the partners in the new British agreements (approximately USD 6,000 billion). This difference primarily reflects the EU's ability not only to conclude agreements with some of the same partners as the United Kingdom (India, New Zealand, and Australia), but also to finalise negotiations with other emerging economies not covered by the new British agreements (Brazil, Argentina, and Indonesia in particular). On the other hand, these latter agreements give the European Union an advantage by providing greater exposure to major drivers of global growth such as Brazil and Indonesia (in terms of aggregate annual GDP growth), as illustrated in the right-hand chart.

In qualitative terms, comparing the content of European and British agreements is instructive. This exercise does, however, present certain limitations. While agreements concluded by the European Union generally appear more comprehensive in terms of tariff lines and sectors covered, this is partly because they must address the offensive interests of all twenty-seven member states, whereas British agreements can be more tightly focused on the comparative advantages specific to the UK economy.

The comparison of the agreements concluded with India nonetheless illustrates one of the main advantages that the European Union continues to enjoy in international trade negotiations: the size of its market. Whereas the British agreement covers 92% of UK exports to India, the EU agreement covers 99% of the value of European exports to that country. Both agreements also provide for a reduction in customs duties on automobiles to 10% within a quota. However, the European Union secured a quota of up to 250,000 vehicles per year, compared with only 37,000 for the United Kingdom.

The agreements concluded with New Zealand and Australia illustrate another consequence of this size differential. In order to obtain full access to these partners' markets, the United Kingdom accepted a gradual liberalisation of its market for certain sensitive agricultural products, notably beef and lamb. The European Union, for its part, secured substantial market openings while retaining quotas limiting access to its market in these particularly sensitive sectors.

This dynamic appears to confirm a paradox. While the United Kingdom sought to recover its trade autonomy in order to escape the supposed inertia of European trade policy, Brexit — combined with the deterioration of the international economic environment — has contributed to revitalising that very European trade policy. The European Commission has indeed invested significant efforts in accelerating trade negotiations and simplifying procedures for adopting agreements, in particular by seeking to limit the effects of the "mixed" nature of certain trade agreements. The agility advantage that the United Kingdom sought to build through an independent trade policy thus appears to have been largely offset by the European Commission's renewed proactivity and the persistent attractiveness of the European market.

This trend could continue in the coming years. While the United Kingdom is currently focused on modernising several existing agreements — notably with South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, and the Gulf Cooperation Council — the European Union is pursuing negotiations aimed at concluding new trade agreements with several major emerging economies, including the Philippines, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia.

03 | Managing the Powerful: the United States and China

The United States and China occupied a particular place in the debates surrounding Brexit and in the reflections that led to the "Global Britain" strategy. The United Kingdom intended to leverage its special relationship with the United States to mitigate the impact of Brexit. It also sought to have greater flexibility to define its own economic and trade policy vis-à-vis China.

With regard to the United States, the record is particularly mixed. Despite several years of negotiations under the Trump I and then Biden administrations, the United Kingdom never succeeded in concluding the bilateral free trade agreement that had been one of the main economic promises of Brexit. On one hand, the United Kingdom was never a major trade priority for successive American administrations. On the other hand, the UK was confronted with American negotiators presenting positions just as difficult as those encountered during the TTIP negotiations between the EU and the United States — demanding in particular enhanced access to the British agricultural market and the relaxation of certain European sanitary standards retained by the United Kingdom, such as the ban on chemical decontamination treatments of poultry carcasses after slaughter and the ban on the use of growth hormones in cattle farming for meat production.[8]

Donald Trump's return to the White House in 2025 further reduced the prospects for such an agreement, with the American administration not sparing the United Kingdom from tariff surcharges and trade investigations that could lead to new restrictions. In this regard, while the United Kingdom succeeded in concluding an "Economic Prosperity Deal" in 2025 with Washington, this agreement does not exempt it from American surcharges, nor does it grant it treatment genuinely more favourable than that accorded by the United States to the European Union[9]. In other words, the "Economic Prosperity Deal" constitutes more of a mechanism for mitigating American protectionist measures than a true trade liberalisation agreement. The surcharge imposed on British imports amounts to 10% on top of the pre-existing US "most favoured nation" customs tariff, while that imposed on the European Union consists of an "all-in" tariff of 15%. On automobiles, the United Kingdom obtained a quota of 100,000 vehicles exported to the United States at a customs duty rate of 10%, while the European Union faces a rate of 15% but with no limit on export volume. Steel is the sector where the British situation stands apart, as the United Kingdom is subject to an additional duty rate of 25%, compared with 50% for the European Union at this stage (EU–US negotiations are ongoing at the time of writing).

The record is similarly mixed with regard to China. Some Brexit supporters had hoped that an independent trade policy would allow the United Kingdom to strike a different chord from the European Union and, through a more pragmatic approach, obtain better access to the Chinese market. The geopolitical developments of the 2020s have, however, progressively narrowed this room for manoeuvre. Growing tensions between the United States and China, concerns about technological dependencies, and the rising stakes of economic security have led London to adopt a diagnosis broadly comparable to that of its European partners[10]. However, this convergence in the perception of the challenges has not translated into the deployment of comparable means to address them.

On a purely commercial level, while the European Union applies nearly 200 trade defence measures (across all origins)[11], the United Kingdom applies fewer than 50[12]. This difference admittedly reflects a more liberal British tradition, one that the UK defended while it was an EU member state. It may also highlight the constraints facing a mid-sized economy acting alone, whose ability to deter or resist retaliatory measures is more limited. The steel, aluminium, and electric vehicle sectors illustrate this difference particularly well.

In the steel sector, the European Union maintains a dense set of anti-dumping, anti-subsidy, and safeguard measures designed to limit the effects of global overcapacity, particularly from China[13]. The United Kingdom has retained some of the measures inherited from the European Union, but their maintenance has regularly been the subject of internal debate since Brexit, revealing the difficulties associated with a trade defence policy conducted at the national level[14].

A similar dynamic is observable in the electric vehicle sector. Faced with an influx of Chinese vehicles benefiting from substantial public subsidies, the European Union opened an anti-subsidy investigation and then in 2024 adopted additional countervailing duties of up to more than 35% depending on the manufacturers concerned. The United Kingdom, for its part, chose not to implement comparable measures[15], even though the automotive industry is among the strategic sectors of its economy.

04 | Global Britain Put to the Test of Numbers: Has British Trade Policy Succeeded in Rebalancing the UK's Trade?

Beyond the number of agreements concluded and their legal content, the main question raised by the "Global Britain" strategy is that of its real impact on the geography of British trade. The stated objective of successive governments was indeed to reduce the UK's historical dependence on the European market and to encourage a gradual rebalancing towards the most dynamic economies of global growth, notably in the Indo-Pacific region. This orientation rested on the idea that global economic growth in the coming decades would be located primarily outside Europe, and that the United Kingdom, freed from the constraints of the common commercial policy, would be better placed to benefit from it.

Evaluating this ambition requires, however, distinguishing between two questions. The first is to determine whether the agreements concluded by the United Kingdom have actually allowed it to position itself at the main growth poles of the global economy. The second is to determine whether this strategy has translated into a lasting change in the geographical structure of British trade.

1. Anchoring to Global Growth Poles: A Coherent Strategy with Still-Limited Effects

At first glance, the strategy pursued by the United Kingdom since Brexit shows a certain coherence. The new agreements concluded under Global Britain target primarily economies whose growth prospects are superior to those of mature European economies. Accession to the CPTPP, the conclusion of agreements with Australia, New Zealand, and above all India, testify to an explicit desire to gradually reorient British trade action towards the Indo-Pacific region. As the European Union's share of global GDP is set to decline gradually under the effect of the rise of emerging economies, India, ASEAN, and several Pacific economies should represent a growing share of global production and consumption.

That said, the expected economic gains from the new agreements concluded by the United Kingdom as an independent trading power remain relatively limited. According to impact assessments published by the British government, the free trade agreement with Australia is expected to increase UK GDP by approximately 0.08% in the long run. The agreement concluded with New Zealand would generate a gain of only around 0.03%. Accession to the CPTPP, often presented as one of the flagship achievements of Global Britain, is expected to generate only an additional gain of approximately 0.08% of GDP.

These results may appear modest relative to the ambitions set out during the 2016 referendum. They are largely explained, however, by the structure of British trade. Australia and New Zealand remain relatively secondary trading partners for the United Kingdom. Despite close historical, cultural, and political ties, their geographical distance and the size of their markets naturally limit the intensity of trade. As for the CPTPP, its economic interest is diminished by the fact that most of its members were already covered by preferential agreements inherited from the UK's EU membership and subsequently rolled over as continuity agreements. Of the eleven members of the partnership at the time of the British accession, only Brunei and Malaysia were not already linked to the United Kingdom by a preferential trade agreement.

Only the agreement concluded with India appears to constitute a special case. The first major trade agreement negotiated by the United Kingdom with a large emerging economy since Brexit, it probably best embodies the initial ambitions of the Global Britain strategy. Given the size of the Indian economy and its growth prospects, its expected effects on the British economy are greater than those of the other agreements concluded since 2020, with an estimated long-run GDP gain of approximately 0.13%. Even this result, however, remains relatively modest in relation to the size of the British economy and the historical importance of its trade with the European Union.

Source: UK Government impact assessments

2. Reducing Dependence on the European Union: An Objective Still Largely Unachieved

Ten years after the Brexit referendum and five years after the UK's effective departure from the European single market, the principal finding of British trade statistics is arguably the remarkable stability of the geography of UK trade. The diversification ambition underpinning the Global Britain strategy rested on the idea that an autonomous trade policy would gradually reduce British dependence on the European market and redirect a growing share of trade towards the most dynamic regions of the global economy. At this stage, however, the available data suggest that this reorientation remains extremely limited.

The European Union remains by far the United Kingdom's largest trading partner. In 2024, it still accounts for nearly 41% of British exports and nearly 50% of the country's imports. No other partner comes close. The United States, which constitutes the UK's second largest trading partner, accounts for approximately 22.5% of British exports and 13.2% of imports. China occupies an even more modest position, with 3.6% of British exports and 7.7% of imports.

Yet in 2015, the year before the Brexit referendum, the European Union already accounted for 42.3% of British exports and 52.5% of imports. This evolution therefore reflects a very limited decline in the EU's share of British trade, and certainly not a rebalancing: its share of exports fell by 1.3 percentage points between 2015 and 2024, while its share of imports declined by 2.5 points. Ten years after the referendum, the changes observed remain modest relative to the still-dominant weight of the European market and do not yet permit a conclusion that a structural long-term rebalancing trend is underway. It will probably take several more years to determine whether this relative decline heralds a gradual diversification of British trade or whether it simply constitutes a limited fluctuation around a trade structure and geography of trade that has remained largely unchanged.

The value-based data lead to a similar conclusion. In 2024, British exports to the European Union exceed 430 billion euros, while imports from the EU surpass 540 billion euros. The European Union thus remains not only the UK's largest trading partner, but also the primary source of its external trade deficit. This situation reflects the depth of the value chains built up over several decades of European economic integration, as well as the geographical proximity of the markets involved. Despite Brexit, no other trading partner appears today to be in a position to substitute for the European market at a comparable scale.

This finding is all the more striking given that the flagship agreements concluded under Global Britain do not yet appear to be real drivers of change in British trade. These new agreements concern partners whose economic weight remains relatively limited in the UK's external trade. Their combined share of British exports amounts to less than 4.5% in 2024, a level close to that observed before Brexit. Thus, while it is likely that the effects of these agreements will unfold over time — with businesses needing to adapt their supply chains and develop new markets — no major shift in the geography of British trade can yet be attributed to the new trade agreements concluded under the Global Britain strategy.

When one examines the changes that have occurred since the referendum, these appear to result more from the strengthening of trade with the United States and, to a lesser extent, China than from the direct effects of the new British trade policy. The share of British exports directed towards the United States thus rose from 19.2% in 2015 to 22.5% in 2024. In value terms, exports to the American market increased by approximately 95 billion euros over the period. Imports from the United States also rose sharply, climbing from approximately 85 billion to more than 140 billion euros.

Yet this evolution cannot be attributed to the Global Britain commercial strategy. As noted above, the United Kingdom never succeeded in concluding the bilateral free trade agreement with Washington. The intensification of trade with the United States appears to result more from the inherent dynamism of the transatlantic economic relationship, particularly in the services, finance, digital, and investment sectors.

China constitutes a second revealing example. British imports from China have grown significantly over the past two decades and remain today above their pre-Brexit level. Exports to China have also increased continuously, even if they remain modest compared with the trade flows maintained with the European Union or the United States. Here again, this evolution does not result directly from the choices made under Global Britain, but rather from structural trends linked to China's integration into the global economy and its growing weight in international value chains.

In the final analysis, the available trade data suggest that the diversification of British trade remains, at this stage, barely underway, and that the adjustments observed in the geography of trade result more from the economic attractiveness of the United States and China, as well as from the spontaneous evolution of world trade, than from the direct effects of the trade strategy implemented under Global Britain. In other words, the principal transformations observed in the geography of British trade appear to be driven more by the structural forces of the global economy than by the new trade orientations defined by London since Brexit.

Conclusion

Six years after Brexit, the record of the "Global Britain" strategy is mixed. The United Kingdom has succeeded in reconstituting the bulk of its pre-Brexit network of trade agreements and in demonstrating its institutional capacity to conduct an independent trade policy. However, this recovered autonomy has not translated into a decisive advantage in agreement negotiations, nor into a significant transformation of the geography of its trade. The economic gains remain modest, and comparison with the European Union reveals a structural differential that is difficult to bridge: in international trade negotiations, the size of the market remains a central determinant of bargaining power, and Brexit has not allowed the United Kingdom to escape this reality.

Paradoxically, in seeking to emancipate itself from European trade policy, the United Kingdom has contributed to its revitalisation. Confronted with a more fragmented and more competitive international environment, the European Union has accelerated its trade agenda, expanded its geographical coverage, and strengthened its economic defence instruments, thereby reducing the agility advantage that London had hoped to gain from its recovered autonomy.

More fundamentally, the ambition of trade diversification runs up against realities that political autonomy alone is insufficient to transform: geographical location, the depth of value chains built up over fifty years of European integration, and the persistent attractiveness of the single market.

The British experience thus serves as a reminder that in trade policy, freedom of action is an important resource, but it is no substitute for the power of a large market or for the proximity effects that durably shape international trade.

Taken as a whole, the results observed to date suggest that Global Britain has constituted more of a political project aimed at giving strategic coherence to Brexit than a strategy that has profoundly reoriented the UK's international trade integration.

Bibliography

• UK Government, Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (London: HM Government, 2021).
• UK Government, UK Trade Agreements in Effect, GOV.UK, accessed 3 September 2026, available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/uk-trade-agreements-in-effect.
• UK Government, Department for International Trade, Annual Report and Accounts 2022–23 (London: HMSO, 2023)
• European Commission, Report on the Implementation and Enforcement of EU Trade Agreements 2025, COM(2025) 920 final, Brussels, 2025.
• Joris Larik, Imitation as Flattery: The UK's Trade Continuity Agreements and the EU's Normative Foreign Policy, European Journal of International Law, Volume 34, Issue 4, November 2023, Pages 801–830
• Guillermo Larbalestier, Minako Morita-Jaeger, Nicolò Tamberi and Manuel Tong Koecklin, Joining the CPTPP: Economic Opportunities and Political Dilemmas of Future Expansions for the UK, UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO), University of Sussex, 2024
• Emily Fry, Britain's Post-Brexit Trade Patterns Are Finally Emerging in the Data, Resolution Foundation, 2024
• Hall, S., The UK-India FTA Shows the Challenges of Delivering Measurable Economic Growth Through Trade Deals, UK in a Changing Europe, 3 November 2025.
• Heron, T., Siles-Brügge, G., & McDonald, D. (2025). Performing trade: 'Global Britain' and the UK's post-Brexit free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand. Review of International Political Economy, 32(5), 1468–1491.
• García, M., "Post-Brexit Trade Policy in the UK: Placebo Policy-Making?", Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 30, no. 11, 2023, pp. 2492–2518

Sources

1. Theresa May, "The Government's Negotiating Objectives for Exiting the EU", speech delivered at Lancaster House, London, 17 January 2017, available on the UK Government website: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-governments-negotiating-objectives-for-exiting-the-eu-pm-speech
2. Boris Johnson, "PM Statement on EU Negotiations", Prime Minister's statement, 24 December 2020, available on the UK Government website: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-statement-on-eu-negotiations-24-december-2020
3. UK Government, Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (London: HM Government, March 2021)
4. National Audit Office, Progress with Trade Negotiations, HC 862, London, 8 December 2021, p. 6: "no other country has attempted a programme of negotiations on this scale"
5. House of Commons Library, UK replacement of the EU's external agreements after Brexit, CBP-8370, 18 December 2020, citing the Impact Assessment of the Trade Bill (November 2017).
6. Joris Larik, "Imitation as Flattery: The UK's Trade Continuity Agreements after Brexit", European Journal of International Law, vol. 34, no. 4, 2023. The author notes that observers had expected the UK's partners to exploit its position as an independent negotiator and the smaller size of its market to obtain more favourable terms than those granted to the European Union.
7. Canada Border Services Agency, Customs Notice 24-07: Expiry of Specific Rules of Origin Provisions under the Canada-United Kingdom Trade Continuity Agreement, 26 March 2024, §3. The notice specifies that the possibility of cumulating materials and production operations carried out in the European Union ceased to apply as of 1 April 2024.
8. David Henig, Michael Gasiorek and Guillermo Larbalestier, "The US negotiating objectives for the UK-US trade deal clearly put America First", UK Trade Policy Observatory, University of Sussex, 5 March 2019. The authors highlight that American objectives include, in particular, challenging certain sanitary and phytosanitary measures retained by the UK from the European acquis.
9. UK Government, UK-US Economic Prosperity Deal, May 2025; House of Commons Library, UK-US Economic Prosperity Deal, 2025; European Commission, EU-US Trade Agreement in Principle, July 2025
10. HM Government, Integrated Review Refresh 2023: Responding to a More Contested and Volatile World, March 2023; HM Government, UK Strategic Framework and Economic Security, May 2024.
11. European Commission, Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council: 43rd Annual Report on the European Union's Anti-Dumping, Anti-Subsidy and Safeguard Activities and on the Use of Trade Defence Instruments by Third Countries against the EU in 2024, Brussels, 28 July 2025, available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52025DC0428
12. Trade Remedies Authority, Annual Report and Accounts 2024–25, London, July 2025, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tra-annual-report-and-accounts-2024-25/tra-annual-report-and-accounts-2024-25-html-version
13. Ibid.
14. Trade Remedies Authority, Steel Safeguard Measure Reconsideration Recommendation, 2022; House of Commons Library, UK Steel Safeguards, 2022
15. See in particular UK Trade Policy Observatory, EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, June 2024; Reuters, "Britain has no plans for EU-style tariffs on Chinese EVs", 14 October 2024; Trade Remedies Authority, statements regarding a possible investigation into Chinese electric vehicles, 2024