Category: Trade

The statement made by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Secretary of State for International Trade, in the House of Commons on 5 January 2022.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In a former incarnation, I was indeed in that other role.

I am really delighted to be able to report to the House that, just before Christmas, the Australian Trade Minister, Dan Tehan, and I signed a comprehensive free trade agreement between the United Kingdom and Australia. This agreement deepens our bond of common values and a shared belief in the combined power of democracy, free trade and high standards. This is the first new trade deal the UK has negotiated from scratch since leaving the European Union. It is truly a world-class partnership, allowing our businesses to trade and invest more freely.

The deal will uphold high standards and foster collaboration on challenges such as tackling climate change, unfair trading practices and growing the low-carbon economy, going further than ever before in many important areas and showing what we can do as an independent trading nation. It eliminates tariffs on 100% of UK exports, and includes flexible rules of origin, meaning that UK businesses can use some imported parts and ingredients, and still qualify for the new 0% tariffs when exporting to Australia. It gives UK firms new legally guaranteed access to bids for over £10 billion of Australian Government contracts on an equal footing with Australian firms. It provides unprecedented new opportunities for young Britons to live and work in Australia, and it paves the way for the UK to join the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, or CPTPP, which would further open 11 markets worth £8.4 trillion in GDP for British exporters and investors. Accession to the CPTPP could see 99.9% of UK exports being eligible for tariff-free trade with some of the biggest economies of the present and future, from Japan to Mexico, and from Canada to Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Unlike EU membership, it would achieve that while allowing us to continue to keep control over our laws, our borders and our money.

This deal is expected to increase trade with Australia by more than 50%. It is expected to add £900 million to household wages, and to deliver a boost for the economy of over £2 billion by 2035—compared with what we would see if we did not have a deal—benefiting communities and helping to level up every region and nation of our United Kingdom.

The agreement that I have signed delivers for the whole of the Union. The economies of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are estimated to benefit from a combined boost of £200 million, and the economic impact assessment that we have published shows that the west midlands, the north-east, the north-west, the south-east, the south-west and Wales are set to see the biggest proportional gains. The deal will benefit Scotland’s financial services industry, boost innovative aerospace design and manufacture in the west midlands, provide new opportunities for Welsh fintech companies, allow Northern Ireland’s manufacturers to export more competitively, and help car makers to support thousands of jobs in the north-east.

The agreement means that Australia will remove tariffs from all its UK imports, making it more competitive for the 15,300 UK businesses who currently export iconic products such as Jaguar and Aston Martin cars, Scotch whisky, London gin and UK fashion to Australia. It will encourage new companies to enter the market, including small businesses and family-run firms which will find it easier, cheaper and faster to sell their fantastic goods and services to Australia for the first time. It also delivers for consumers. The removal of UK tariffs on Australian favourites such as Jacob’s Creek and Hardys wines will help to keep prices down. UK manufacturers will benefit from cheaper access to important Australian machinery parts, allowing them to be more competitive and to grow.

The agreement means that investing in Australia will be easier than ever before. It more than quadruples the threshold that UK investments need to meet before being subject to review by Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board, which will help to save time, save money and cut red tape. The UK’s world-class services industry will now have unprecedented and legally guaranteed access to the Australian market, allowing UK legal and engineering firms to compete on an equal footing with domestic firms in Australia.

Ambitious tech start-ups, financial services firms and the creative sectors will benefit from new opportunities to trade digitally. The agreement secures the free flow of data while locking in a legal requirement for personal data protection in both countries, guarantees fair access to Australia for telecoms companies, and forges greater co-operation on 5G and cyber-security. It includes the world’s first dedicated innovation chapter in a free trade agreement, establishing a strategic innovation dialogue to ensure that the deal keeps up with technological developments and drives the commercialisation of new technologies.

Our British businesses will also benefit from unrivalled new access to business visas, allowing staff to relocate more easily and travel more freely to work in Australia. It will enable Britons aged 18 to 35 to travel and work in Australia for up to three years, and they will no longer have to work on a farm to obtain a working holiday maker visa. Australian firms will no longer have to prioritise hiring Australian nationals over a British national. Additionally, executives and managers who are transferred to their company locations in Australia will have the right to stay for four years instead of two. They can also bring their spouses and dependent children, who will have the same four-year right to work.

The agreement has been crafted through consultation with UK businesses and interested parties at all stages of the negotiations. It offers a suite of arrangements going further than Australia has ever gone with any other country in a free trade agreement, which is a testament to the strength of our relationship and the hard work of my brilliant officials at the Department for International Trade and their Australian counterparts. It includes ambitious commitments to work together in addressing the shared challenges of environmental conservation, women’s economic empowerment and poverty reduction. It includes a commitment to maintain high animal welfare standards.

We have also secured protections relevant to the NHS and Australia’s health system in the agreement, which keep the NHS out of scope of the agreement. The NHS is not, and never will be, for sale to the private sector.

British food and drink is world-renowned for its quality, and this trade deal will deliver benefits to the industry—from tariff-free access to the Australian market to faster customs arrangements. The deal could see a wide range of iconic UK products, including Scotch whisky, Irish cream and Welsh cider, given protected geographical indication status in Australia. By creating new opportunities, this deal will help continue a trend of booming UK food and drink exports to Australia, which have more than doubled in the last decade. So we should be unafraid of fair competition and positive about the export opportunities that exist.

Let me also take the opportunity to alleviate the concerns of some colleagues regarding meat imports from Australia. The reality is that beef imports from Australia account for only a small fraction of our overall beef imports. Just 0.1% of all Australian beef exports went to the UK last year. Also, it is relatively unlikely that large volumes of beef and sheep will be diverted to the UK from lucrative markets in Asia, which are much closer to Australia. More than 75% of Australian beef and 70% of Australian sheepmeat exports last year went to markets in Asia and the Pacific—markets that we are also keen to grow in through our membership of the CPTPP.

With regard to animal welfare and food standards, we have been clear throughout this process that we will not compromise on our high standards, and we have delivered on that. All imports into the UK will have to comply with our existing food standards requirements—including the ban on hormone-treated beef. The deal also includes a dedicated chapter and non-regression clause on animal welfare. This will help to ensure that neither country lowers their animal welfare standards in a manner that impacts trade.

This agreement also supports the UK’s climate change commitments, reaffirming both parties’ commitments to all of the Paris agreement objectives—the first time that Australia has included a substantive climate change article in any trade deal. It also sets out areas for future co-operation on emissions reduction, zero emissions technology, energy efficiency and sustainable transport. So UK businesses will benefit from zero tariffs on all low-carbon exports to Australia, including of wind turbine parts and electric vehicles, creating more opportunities to grow the low-carbon economy.

The Government are committed to transparency and inclusiveness in all our future trading arrangements, and the House will now have substantial opportunity to scrutinise this deal in detail. We have already presented the full treaty text, a draft explanatory memorandum and the independently scrutinised impact assessment to Parliament, and we anticipate that there will now be a period of several months before the agreement is formally laid before Parliament for the 21 sitting days of formal scrutiny under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, otherwise known as CRaG. That will allow ample time for the Trade and Agriculture Commission to prepare its advice, as well as for the International Trade Committee and International Agreements Committee to produce a report on the agreement, should they so wish. I have already written to the new Trade and Agriculture Commission to seek its advice on the deal with respect to our domestic statutory protections for agriculture. That will help me to inform the Government’s own report on this issue, as required under section 42 of the Agriculture Act 2020. I also wish to highlight that any legislative changes required to give effect to the deal will be scrutinised by Parliament in the usual way ahead of ratification.

So this is a landmark agreement and will be a feature of the relationship between our two great countries for many years to come. As a newly independent trading nation, the UK is reaching out to seize the opportunities of the future—opportunities that we are uniquely well placed to take. The deal I have signed with Australia, one of our closest and most important allies, is just the latest chapter in our progress towards that brighter future, forging an open, enterprising economy, enabling us to build back better from the pandemic, and levelling up every region and nation of our United Kingdom.

I commend this statement to the House.

The speech made by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Secretary of State for International Trade, at Asia House on 13 December 2021.

Thank you very much indeed Michael. It’s a real pleasure to be able to speak to you all today, sadly not in person, technology being what we are able to use in order to ensure we keep ourselves and our families safe as we can, because of course the pandemic has shown us some of the challenges it brings but also the importance of diverse, resilient, global trade networks.

Supply chains were created in the Age of Exploration, an important part of our island story and our proud maritime traditions.

The voyages of one of the earliest explorers of the Asia-Pacific from our islands, the famous merchant Ralph Fitch, gets a mention in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

And of course in 1786, one of Britain’s greatest sailors, the Royal Navy’s Captain James Cook, mapped the Pacific Ocean, yielding vital new trade routes and safe harbours for international shipping.

Captain Cook’s goat became the first farm animal to circumnavigate the globe – twice, in fact.

But Cook himself came to a sticky end while trying to kidnap the King of Hawaii – a story in itself – but his goat managed to retire back to Britain – and indeed on a government pension.

I am hopeful that those perilous endeavours are unlikely to be repeated, as I’m sure the Treasury hopes too!

It is perhaps though to that buccaneering spirit and entrepreneurism of explorers like Ralph Fitch and Captain Cook that we now look as an independent, sovereign, free trading nation once again, realising untapped trading opportunities with fast growing economies and partners around the world.

As we made clear in our Integrated Review published last year – the largest such review of the government’s vision for Britain’s future since the Cold War – we know that the Indo Pacific region is absolutely vital to that future.

It’s home to some to some of the world’s fastest growing economies, and it’s critical to Global Britain’s strategic, economic, and security interests.

The centre of economic gravity is moving East.

By 2030, ASEAN’s digital economy alone is projected to hit a colossal $1 trillion. And 65 percent of the world’s middle-class consumers are expected to be in Asia. This will drive global demand for precisely the type of high-quality goods and services in which the UK excels.

So, as we emerge from the economic shock of the pandemic, we are seizing this pivotal moment with both hands.

Next year will be a five-star year for the UK’s trade agenda, as we look to begin formal negotiations on deals with Canada, with Mexico, the Gulf Cooperation Council and India. In particular of course, a big focus will be our plans to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the CPTPP, a huge free trade area with a combined GDP of £8.4 trillion, including the Pacific region’s most dynamic economies.

And early next year I hope to visit several CPTPP members, including Japan and Singapore, to take those discussions forward.

Our ambition is to reach bilateral and multilateral deals with countries whose trade was worth more than £140 billion last year.

This is a really ambitious goal that will put Global Britain in pole position to pursue new opportunities, one which the Prime Minister and I are excited and determined about. We know that a revolution in e-commerce also means that transfers of services are becoming ever more important components of the international trading system. An engineer’s report, a 3D printer design, or advance in machine learning can be just as valuable as the contents of a cargo container.

In this new era of digital trade, the potential for UK firms in the advanced, tech savvy and rapidly expanding markets in Asia is truly extraordinary. So, leveraging the UK’s unique strengths as the world’s second largest services exporter – and fifth biggest exporter of digital tech services – we have a unique opportunity to get ahead of the curve.

That’s why as Michael mentioned on Thursday, I was delighted to reach an Agreement in Principle on a digital trade agreement with Singapore – a gateway to the wider Indo-Pacific region.

The world’s most comprehensive, and indeed the first of its kind.

Reflecting the G7 Digital Trade Principles which we brokered under the UK presidency in October, this DEA overhauls outdated trade rules, secures open digital markets through better cross-border data flows, and champions digital trading systems.

It reforms the slashing of red tape and makes trade cheaper, faster, and indeed more secure. A great example of what two outward looking, free trading nations can accomplish together, which we intend to build on in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. We have already become a Dialogue Partner of ASEAN, and we have secured FTAs in the region including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

We have reached Agreements in Principle with Australia and New Zealand, deals that are going to create new opportunities for exporters, and better choice and value for consumers.

So now, in close collaboration with brilliant British businesses, we are opening up access to markets across Asia.

Led by Her Majesty’s fantastic Trade Commissioners: Simon Penney in the Middle East; John Edwards in China; Natalie Black in Asia, and Alan Gemmell in South Asia. From UK cosmetics being able to sell to the fast-growing markets of Indonesia and China, British poultry being served on Japanese tables thanks to our ground-breaking FTA, to British apples being exported to India for the first time.

We are also identifying new opportunities through Trade Dialogues, and taking our relationships further with Enhanced Trade Partnerships.

These are perhaps less likely to hit the headlines than FTAs, but they have the potential to make a real difference to British business.

Take India, for example – already the UK’s 15th largest trading partner.

The trade partnership the Prime Minister announced in May has the ambition to double our bilateral trade by 2030 – already £24 billion before the pandemic struck. An FTA could strengthen this further by unlocking opportunities in areas where UK firms are second to none.

And circumstances permitting, I hope to commence talks on such an agreement during a visit to India early next year.

Our ambitions in the Indo-Pacific go far beyond the economic, of course. The region is also critical to our security and global ambition to support open societies.

So, as we look to seize the moment of opportunity to reshape our relationships on the world stage as Global Britain, it is to our like-minded friends and allies in the Asia Pacific that we look.

And using our influence to shape international trade to reflect our core values, including freedom, fairness, sovereignty, the rule of law, and good environmentalist policies. The UK believes in open markets and fair competition where all countries are treated fairly in the global system and businesses can compete based on merit.

And in growing, dynamic democracies throughout Asia, we see like-minded countries who share that outlook.

OECD analysis has estimated that substantial liberalisation of market access barriers by the G20 countries alone could boost UK exports by around £75 billion a year.

A truly colossal sum that would mean growth, jobs and prosperity right across the UK. So, together, the UK intends to work with our Asian friends and partners to ensure nations play by the rules, to tackle the increasing, systematic use of market distorting practices, such as harmful industrial subsidies, unfair practices by state-owned enterprises and forced technology transfer.

We want to help create modern, fit-for-purpose WTO rules accounting for the seismic shifts in the global economy which have occurred in the more than 25 years since the Uruguay round.

We must ensure that the economic constraints of Covid do not become the chains than manacle the global trading system to a new and devastating round of protectionism, but rather a springboard towards a liberal, outward looking, free trading future. As an independent, free trading nation, the United Kingdom has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to grasp new opportunities – with the dynamic economies of South and South East Asia foremost amongst these.

By remove unnecessary barriers to free and fair trade, and ensuring that we are not strategically dependent on fair-weather friends.

Working with strategic partners across Asia and beyond to make the global trading system fit for the 21st century, we will strengthen our trading relationships and build better, greener and more resilient global supply chains.

This will help unleash Britain’s potential to power our economic recovery, making our businesses more dynamic, and levelling up our country as we build back better from Covid-19.

2022 is Global Britain’s five-star moment to write a new chapter in our illustrious history, pioneering the future of international trade. And I intend to seize it.

Thank you.

The comments made by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Secretary of State for International Trade, on 4 December 2021.

From the high street to the web, small businesses are at the heart of our economy. It is great to see so many are reaping the benefits of exporting and we want to see them go even further.

Just 1 in 10 small businesses currently export, so we’re boosting our support to give them direct, tailored advice to help them on their exporting journey. Many of these businesses are in prime position to take advantage of the trade deals we are negotiating, and can play a vital role in helping the UK reach our Race to a Trillion.

The comments made by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Secretary of State for International Trade, on 15 November 2021.

The UK makes some of the best products in the world, but only 1 in 10 businesses currently export them around the world. I want this International Trade Week to be a catalyst for businesses to sell to new markets and take advantage of the trade deals we are negotiating.

My department has a clear message to any business thinking about exporting for the first time. There has never been a better time to export.

Our industry experts in Trade and Investment Hubs around the UK and based around the world will stand shoulder to shoulder and give you the support you need to take the next step on your exporting journey and sell to the world.

The statement issued by the Department for International Trade on 31 October 2021.

We welcome the Biden Administration’s willingness to work with us to address trade issues relating to steel and aluminium, and it is encouraging that the US is taking steps to de-escalate this issue.

The International Trade Secretary recently held positive discussions with US Trade Representative Katherine Tai in London. The UK is committed to addressing both global steel overcapacity and decarbonisation, and we remain focused on agreeing a resolution that sees damaging tariffs removed to the benefit of businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.