Where Brexit negotiations are concerned, we have reached (as they say in Britain) “squeaky bum time.” The triggering of Article 50 on March 29th 2017 started a 2‑year countdown for the UK and EU to negotiate a withdrawal agreement for a binding international treaty. Yet just 5 months from deadline, the EU’s position on Northern Ireland and a lack of domestic support for Prime Minister Theresa May’s desired long-term trading relationship mean a no deal Brexit in March remains a real possibility (the tweet linked here quotes Britain’s trade minister Liam Fox). True, much of the withdrawal agreement has been long agreed. A transition period through to 31 December 2020 is planned to essentially keep the UK within the EU’s economic institutions (the single market and customs union), though reports suggest both sides might be willing to extend this for an extra year. Free movement of people would continue for this period, and the UK would pay £39 billion into the EU budget. Importantly, though Article 50 states that a withdrawal agreement must take account of the longer term post-exit relationship, this is not going to be achieved in time: the agreement would merely be accompanied with a joint, loose-languaged political declaration on the future framework. But it’s here where difficulties have arisen, and most center around the Northern Irish border. Both sides have said from the start that, post-Brexit, they want to keep the border between the Republic of Ireland (an EU state) and Northern Ireland (part of the UK) free of physical infrastructure and associated interventions at politically-sensitive crossings. But making that commitment self-evidently necessitates a trade relationship. Given long-term trade arrangements will not be agreed in the withdrawal agreement, the EU has therefore insisted that the withdrawal deal itself contain backstop provisions to ensure the border remained open should another arrangement or trade deal incorporating not be agreed. This is what led last December to the UK and EU agreeing in principle to a fudged “backstop” position on Northern Ireland. In vintage legalese, the text stated: “In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement.” Given the UK government has said repeatedly that the UK would be leaving the EU customs union and single market, this text raised Brexiteer eyebrows. Yes, the UK government agreed this to kick forward future trade relationship talks, and in the hope it would not be ultimately necessary. But talk of full alignment left ambiguity, and the potential for the backstop itself to keep the UK locked into Brussels’ regulatory and customs orbit. However much the UK government insisted that this language did not mean regulatory harmonization, but instead merely achieving shared regulatory goals via detailed sanitary rules, customs procedures, and the Single Energy Market, the backstop left an uncomfortable feeling that the UK had fallen into a trap. This was not helped when the EU then rejected proposed “technological solutions” and “away from the border checks” that the UK insisted could have avoided the backstop. The unease intensified when, from February, the EU and Ireland began proposing a backstop arrangement where Northern Ireland alone would remain within the EU single market and customs union to ensure a soft border. This was something out of kilter not only with the text but with the wishes of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist party which props up the Conservative minority government. This is all significant because Brexiteers fear now that the Northern Irish border has become the tail wagging the dog not just on the backstop, but on the potential future long-term trade relationship between the EU and UK. They fear the UK is being hoodwinked into a Brexit-in-name-only by threats of breaking up the UK through saying that only a soft Brexit can keep the Northern Irish border without physical infrastructure. The Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposals for a longer-term trade relationship (known as the Chequers Plan) is Exhibit A. Rather than aiming for the best trade arrangements and then seeking to minimize disruption at the Irish border, the plan seems explicitly designed to keep the border as frictionless as possible, at the cost of an extraordinary loss of policy freedom. Chequers proposes a common rulebook between the UK and the EU on goods and agri-goods trade but not services, where fears of Brussels regulating the City of London alone without a UK vote were reason enough alone for exclusion. Non-regression-like clauses on environmental and labor laws would be included. A complex facilitated customs arrangement would see the UK collect the EU’s tariffs on its behalf. This deal has proven anathema to most Conservative Brexiteers, binding as it does the UK to EU goods regulation without voting power over it and stripping away the bargaining chip of goods regulation in making liberalising trade deals with third parties. They see Chequers as an unnecessary loss of sovereignty, and want Theresa May to “Chuck Chequers” and instead negotiate with the aim of a whole of UK FTA and practical solutions at the border. Incidentally, the EU doesn’t like Chequers either. They rightly see it as cherry-picking parts of the single market, are suspicious of a foreign government collecting its duties and would prefer even tighter integration of lots of regulations (including commitments for full harmonization on labor and environmental laws), such that the UK cannot secure a competitive advantage. Political commentators in the know say Chequers is dead as far as the EU is concerned. In the EU’s eyes, the preferred long-term options have always been a Canada-style free trade agreement, or maintained UK membership of the single market and a customs union (in essence, a political Brexit but not an economic Brexit). Most Brexiteers very much prefer the former, which comes with more regulatory and trade policy freedoms. This brings us to the crux of the current political crisis. May’s government have thus far lined up with the EU (and against Brexiteer insistence otherwise) in stating that it’s impossible to solve the border problem satisfactorily through an ordinary UK-EU free trade deal and other practical solutions. They imply that with a Canada-style FTA, Northern Ireland alone would have to remain tied to EU economic institutions to avoid a hard border, effectively creating an economic border down the Irish Sea. Conveniently, May claims that only something like her Chequers plan can avoid this. But with Chequers seemingly without much support at home or in the EU, the future relationship talks have effectively stalled. With so much uncertainty about it, the backstop agreement has taken center-stage, because de facto that could become the default relationship. And here Brexiteer fears have heightened. Since May insists no UK government would countenance Northern Ireland having different customs arrangements from Britain, she has proposed the whole of the UK remaining in a customs union-like arrangement as a backstop. Earlier this year she suggested this would last for an extra year beyond transition (to December 2021) and Brexiteers are still keen on this kind of time limit. But the EU says that a backstop cannot be time-limited, because otherwise it’s not a backstop. Brexiteers winced this week when the PM’s position seemingly “evolved” in the EU’s direction, with her suggesting remaining in a customs arrangement as a backstop on a “temporary” but indefinite basis. These fears heightened with news that the EU believed there was not enough time to discuss a UK-wide backstop proposal, and insisting that the withdrawal agreement incorporate a “backstop to a backstop,” with a Northern Ireland-only customs arrangement should a full UK-wide agreement fail to be agreed. For many Brexiteers, the major economic benefit of Brexit is the ability to conduct independent trade policy, cutting deals and setting tariffs. An indefinite customs arrangement threatens this. Given the EU would seemingly prefer the whole of the UK to remain within its economic institutions, a non-time-limited customs backstop provides little incentive for the EU to agree to a future comprehensive free trade deal the Brexiteers desire. Combined with Chequers then, Brexiteers fear a huge sell out is on the cards. The UK government’s official position has always been that the country will leave the EU single market and customs union. But now both Chequers and the backstop risk are seen to keep the UK within these arrangements to varying degrees. The result is a political crisis. The PM this week updated the house on the negotiations but could not provide assurances any customs arrangement backstop would be time-limited. She has since floated and then rowed back on extending the transition period, something that would see UK taxpayers pay for at least another year of EU funding, without settling the backstop issue. As a result, everyone is unhappy. There is talk of Brexiteers dethroning May as a last gasp attempt to push for the Canada FTA-type deal the EU has offered. The DUP are threatening to derail the government’s domestic legislative agenda should the PM allow Northern Ireland to be treated differently. The hardline Remainers, meanwhile, are pressing for a second referendum on any withdrawal agreement May brings back. With the clock ticking, and stakes rising, the prospect of no deal is therefore heightening. The EU has engineered a situation where in the long-term it insists either the UK must sign up to a backstop where Northern Ireland must be effectively economically annexed, or the UK must remain locked in the EU’s regulatory and customs embrace itself. The Brexiteers (to my mind rightly) consider this unacceptable. Ignoring whether a change of Prime Minister or strategy is perceived as bad faith negotiating by the UK, it does not seem an extreme position to say that the EU should not have the right to dictate the economic breakup of a sovereign country, nor determine its domestic economic regulations. But at such a late stage and in such a febrile political environment, who knows where this multi-actor game of chicken ends?
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Trade Policy
Is The Trump Administration Finally Going To Pursue Some Trade Liberalization?
The focus of the Trump administration’s trade policy to date has been on renegotiating existing trade deals (with a mix of minor liberalization and modest new protectionism), putting tariffs on a wide range of imports using flimsy justifications, and engaging in a high-profile trade war with China. By contrast, it has put very little effort into pushing for significant new trade liberalization.
That may be about to change. The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office has just sent letters to Congress formally notifying the administration’s intent to enter into trade negotiations with the EU, Japan, and the UK. Cato scholars have called for exactly these negotiations (see here, here, and here, and much more detail here).
There is a lot of work ahead, as these negotiations won’t be easy. They would have been easier if the administration had not imposed “national security” tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from these very same trading partners. Nevertheless, almost two years into the Trump administration, there is finally a glimmer of hope that there could be some trade liberalization coming.
Saving the WTO’s Appeals Process
The continued intransigence of the Trump Administration in blackballing the appointment of new judges to the highest tribunal of world trade compels the 163 other countries that are members of the World Trade Organization to unite by resolving their international disputes in a way that cannot be stopped by the United States. The other, practical way should be the alternative means of trade dispute resolution currently available under Article 25 of the dispute settlement rules that are part of the WTO treaty – WTO arbitration.
The US refusal to join in the consensus needed to appoint and reappoint members of the WTO Appellate Body has now reduced the appellate tribunal from its full complement of seven judges down to the minimum of three judges required by the WTO treaty to hear an appeal. WTO member countries have an automatic right to appeal the legal rulings of ad hoc WTO panels under the treaty. If there are not three judges to hear an appeal, then the right to appeal will be denied and the WTO will be unable to adopt and enforce panel rulings.
Recently, nearly 90 percent of all panel reports have been appealed. Left with no opportunity to appeal, surely every country that loses before a panel will nevertheless seek to exercise its right to an appeal to guarantee that the verdict against it will not be enforceable. The WTO dispute settlement system will then be paralyzed. Moreover, if the rules cannot be upheld and enforced, why bother to comply with them or try to improve them? The very existence of the WTO will then be put at even graver risk than it faces now due to the illegal actions of Trump and his trade enforcers on other fronts in world trade.
If this stalemate between the US and the rest of the WTO continues, come December 11, 2019, the final terms of two of the three remaining members of the Appellate Body will end, and the tribunal will be reduced to only one member. Unlike the US, the other 163 countries in the WTO profess to see this situation as urgent. They also seem to assume they have until December 10, 2019, to resolve it. But one of the three remaining judges could at any time become ill, encounter a legal conflict, or decide to resign for family or other unrelated reasons. This could happen tomorrow.
The 163 other WTO members have endured nearly two years of largely stoic stonewalling by the United States due mainly to the US distress that the Appellate Body has had the temerity to do its job by upholding treaty rules on the use of dumping and other trade remedies that the US played a leading role in writing but now indignantly opposes under pressure from protectionist interests domestically and from within the Trump Administration.
The time has come for the other WTO members to stand up to Trump’s bullying and isolate the United States by employing the alternative of arbitration that has previously been largely ignored but is clearly permitted under the WTO treaty. Under Article 25, any two WTO members can choose to use arbitration when they have a trade dispute. They can select their own arbitrators. They can decide on their own procedures. They do not need prior approval to do so. They cannot be prevented from doing so by any other country. The judgment they get in arbitration will be as binding and as enforceable as any other judgment in WTO dispute settlement.
“Arbitration” is not defined in Article 25. Thus, countries choosing it as an alternative to the regular dispute settlement proceedings are free to decide simply to duplicate those proceedings. They can photocopy the regular dispute settlement rules and adopt them as their form of arbitration. This would have the practical effect of establishing a parallel dispute settlement system in the WTO that is identical to the current one – but that excludes the United States.
NAFTA 2.0: The Best Trade Agreement Ever Negotiated (Except for All of the Others)
The text of the new “United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement” was released last Sunday night, a few hours after I had spoken at an event in Birmingham, England about the virtues of “The Ideal U.S.-U.K. Free Trade Agreement.” To borrow from the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen: I know the ideal free trade agreement; USCMA, you’re no ideal free trade agreement.
The ideal free trade agreement is one which accomplishes maximum market barrier reduction, enables maximum market integration, forecloses governments’ access to discriminatory protectionism, and obligates the parties to refrain from backsliding.
As explained in the paper:
The ideal free trade agreement provides for the elimination of tariffs as quickly as possible on as many goods as possible and to the lowest levels possible. It should limit the use of so-called trade remedy or trade defense measures. It should open all government procurement markets to goods and services providers from the other party. It should open all sectors of the economy to investment from businesses and individuals in the other party. It should open all services markets without exception to competition from providers of the other party. It should ensure that the rules that determine whether products and services are originating (meaning that they come from one or more of the agreement’s parties) are not so restrictive that they limit the scope for supply chain innovations…
…[T]he ideal FTA must also include rules governing e‑commerce. Digital trade — data flows that are essential components in the provision of goods and services in the 21st century — must remain untaxed and protected from misuse and abuse. Rules that prohibit governments from imposing localization requirements or any particular data architectures that reduce the efficacy of digital services should be included, and obligations should be imposed on entities to ensure data privacy, consistent with the requirement that data flow as smoothly as possible.
When border barriers come down, the potentially protectionist aspects of regulation and regulatory regimes become more evident. Certainly, when businesses have to comply with two sets of regulations to sell in two different markets, it limits their capacity to realize economies of scale and reduces their capacity to pass on cost savings in the form of lower prices or reinvestment.
If those regulations are comparable when it comes to achieving the same social outcomes — consumer safety, product reliability, worker safety, environmental friendliness — there may be scope to require businesses to comply with only one set. A regulatory cooperation mechanism to promote mutual recognition would be a useful innovation, as a means to reducing business costs (provided no deep cultural aversion or science-based reason exists for considering one regulation better than the other and worth the greater cost).
Finally, the rules of the ideal FTA must be enforceable. What’s the point of a trade agreement if its terms are just suggestions? To make sure governments keep their promises, trade agreements should have a binding and enforceable dispute settlement mechanism, to ensure that the agreement is followed.
Here’s how the USMCA stacks up to the ideal free trade agreement, which:
- Would provide for the elimination of tariffs as quickly as possible on as many goods as possible and to the lowest levels possible.
In USMCA, most goods trade will continue to be tariff-free (the NAFTA status quo) under the new agreement, and barriers to certain agricultural products will be reduced as well. Moreover, the value thresholds for importing goods without having to pay any duties have been raised in Mexico and Canada, which will benefit small businesses, disproportionately, as they tend to conduct a larger share of transactions online.
(Conclusion: Criterion is almost met).
- Would limit the use of so-called trade remedy or trade defense measures.
Trade remedy laws give domestic industries recourse to trade restrictions when they can demonstrate injury caused by “dumped,” subsidized, or substantially increasing imports. These laws are prone to misuse and abuse and become loopholes through which the benefits of trade barrier reduction achieved in the agreement can be quickly rescinded.
In USMCA, no restrictions on the use of antidumping, countervailing duty, or safeguard measures are made. Rather, the long arm of the Safeguard law extends further under the revised deal by making it more difficult for Canadian and Mexican exporters to be excused from prospective safeguard tariffs. Moreover, the failure of the United States agreeing to blanket exemptions for Canada and Mexico from prospective tariffs on imported automobiles under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and the failure of the United States to remove the existing Section 232 tariffs on Canadian and Mexican aluminum and steel—thereby enshrining the view of Canada and Mexico as threats to U.S. national security—is in extremely poor taste, violates the spirit of a trade agreement, and reflects an absence of understanding of the meaning of being a good trade partner.
(Conclusion: Criterion worse than unmet.)
Evaluating the New NAFTA
There’s a lot in the new NAFTA (technically, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA), some of it good and some of it bad (the new name is terrible, but that’s not particularly important). In this blog post, we offer our thoughts on some of the key provisions, after which we provide an initial overall assessment of the agreement. We break it down into the good, the interesting, the whatever, the worrying, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good:
— Canadian agriculture: In terms of liberalization in the USMCA, the most important component is the liberalization of Canadian agriculture imports, such as dairy products, eggs, wheat, poultry, and wine. Dairy market access was a key concern for the United States, which has long complained about Canada’s strict supply management and quota system. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has noted the opening of Canada’s dairy market as a key achievement, because it gives the U.S. additional access to what was agreed in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). In addition, Canada agreed to give up a pricing system for certain types of milk, as well as expanding the U.S. quota for chicken, eggs, and turkey. On wine, the U.S. and Canada agreed in a side letter that the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) would adjust its measures restricting the sale on non-BC wine in its grocery stores. The United States has agreed to give BC until November 2019 to make this adjustment, before advancing a complaint it already put forward at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on this issue. This is the most positive part of the new agreement. It gives U.S. producers greater access to the Canadian market, and will be good for consumers in Canada.
— de minimis: The de minimis threshold for products that you buy online and can be imported duty free has been raised. The United States allows consumers to purchase goods up to $800 duty free, and has been pushing for Canada and Mexico to raise their limits as well. It did not persuade them to do so in the TPP. In the USMCA, however, Canada raised its de minimis threshold to CAD $150—a significant increase from the previous CAD $20 limit. In addition, sales tax cannot be collected until the value of the product reaches at least CAD $40. This is good for Canadian consumers making online purchases. Additionally, a 2016 study showed that increasing the duty free limit would be cost-saving for Canada. Mexico also increased its de minimis level, from USD $50 to USD $100, with tax free diminimis on USD $50. USTR has noted that this will be especially helpful for small businesses.
The Interesting:
— Investment protection/ISDS: These provisions have been significantly scaled back. We see this as a positive, and it will be interesting to see how it plays politically with left wing critics of existing investment provisions, and with the business groups who want these provisions included.
— Regulatory issues: One notable addition was an expansive chapter on Good Regulatory Practices, which builds upon the TPP Regulatory Coherence chapter, the Canada-EU Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), and bilateral initiatives that have been in place between the U.S. and Canada, as well as with Mexico, since 2011. The key items in this chapter are provisions on increasing transparency in the regulatory process, providing a clear rationale for new regulatory actions, as well as encouraging cooperation on minimizing divergence in regulatory outcomes. The general idea is to make regulations less burdensome on trade. It will be interesting to see how this chapter functions in practice, but it appears to be the most comprehensive attempt to address this issue in any trade agreement the United States has signed.
The New NAFTA
Late last night, Canada, Mexico, and the United States agreed to a revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). They are calling it the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which is a pointless exercise in rebranding, but not worth agonizing about. We suspect that many people will just keep calling it NAFTA.
If you are curious, the full text is here but it is a slog. We are slowly making our way through it, and ultimately will provide an assessment of whether this new deal is net liberalizing. If you are interested in some more technical details, check out the blog posts at the International Economic Law and Policy blog.
If you want to get a general sense of what’s in it, here’s a basic overview. Overall, the new agreement is kind of a mixed bag. There are some improvements, mainly the liberalization of a few Canadian agricultural sectors. However, the agreement is made worse in some ways by making it harder for autos to qualify for zero tariffs. The new agreement has also been modernized by including some recent Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) innovations, which is good. But there are systemic provisions that are not very good. All in all, it is not a terrible deal, although U.S. government resources probably would have been better spent on liberalizing trade with countries with whom we did not already have a trade agreement.
Another Jones Act Absurdity
![Cape Ray](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/cape_ray.jpg?itok=jumx2v2c)
As North Carolina grapples with the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, transportation officials in the state are attempting to secure the use of a U.S. government-owned vessel, the Cape Ray, to transport supplies to the port of Wilmington. With the city temporarily transformed into an island by recent flooding, the roll-on, roll-off ship—or “ro-ro” in maritime parlance—will enable trucks filled with needed goods to drive aboard.
It’s a good thing the ship is government-owned—under private ownership the Cape Ray’s provision of relief supplies would be illegal. This absurd situation is due to a nearly 100-year-old law called the Jones Act. Passed in 1920, the law mandates that ships transporting goods between two points in the United States be U.S.-owned, crewed, flagged and built. The Cape Ray, however, was built in Japan.
Even if officials sought the private sector’s help and a Jones Act-compliant ro-ro ship to transport the trucks, none are available. According to data from the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) there are only seven ro-ro ships in the entire Jones Act fleet. The closest one to North Carolina, the Delta Mariner, isn’t even an ocean-going vessel but rather operates on the Tennessee River. The other six vessels ply routes between the West Coast and Alaska or Hawaii.
The picture is little improved if Jones Act containerships and general cargo ships are also included, with a total of six such vessels currently on the East or Gulf Coasts (MARAD shows five but does not include the recently commissioned El Coquí). The closest one to the North Carolina flood victims is a 47-year-old general cargo ship, the Coastal Venture, which is currently moored near Charleston.
One reason behind the dearth of ships is the fact that U.S.-built vessels cost up to eight times as much as those built overseas. Such exorbitant prices mean that fewer are purchased, with fewer available for both general commerce and emergency situations.
In contrast, there is little difficulty locating foreign-flagged ro-ro vessels in the mid-Atlantic region. The Marshall Islands-flagged Morning Pride, for example, is making its way up the East Coast toward Philadelphia, while the Norwegian-flagged Höegh Asia is bound for Baltimore. A combination cargo/ro-ro vessel, the Saudi-flagged Bahri Tabuk, is currently off the coast of North Carolina.
But because of the Jones Act, none of these ships are eligible to take on relief supplies at a U.S. port and speed them to Wilmington.
The Jones Act’s stated purpose is to ensure that the United States “shall have a merchant marine of the best equipped and most suitable types of vessels sufficient to carry the greater portion of its commerce and serve as a naval or military auxiliary in time of war or national emergency.” But when faced with a genuine emergency, such as Hurricane Maria in 2017 or Hurricane Florence today, the Jones Act fleet is often found wanting.
By its own terms, the law is a failure that actually impedes the realization of its goals. It’s time for the Jones Act to go.