Trade Bites
Episodes
Customs union membership between the EU and the UK
11 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we look at proposals for the UK to join a customs union with the EU. We clarify what is a customs union and discuss whether could it ...
Progress on the EU-UK reset
25 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode discusses the reset package under negotiation between the UK and the EU. Last May, the two sides agreed to align their regulatory systems...
The geopolitics of critical minerals and recent approaches to trade cooperation
11 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Critical minerals are ‘critical’ to the manufacture of vital 21st century products as electric vehicles, mobile phones, solar panels, clean techno...
Greenland, Trump and trade coercion
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In January, Trump threatened to impose tariffs on eight European countries who opposed his demand to take control of Greenland. Whilst this threat was...
Competition policy and industrial policy
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of Trade Bites looks at competition and industrial policy. China's strong industrial policies and state-backed dominance have fuelled glo...
UK Membership of PEM
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In today's episode of Trade Bites, we're discussing the Pan-Euro Mediterranean Convention on Rules of Origin (PEM) and whether the UK should join. T...
Public attitudes to trade and trade policy
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does the British public think about trade? In a democracy, what people think or feel about any area of policy really matters. Trade policy is an ...
The Multilateral Trading System under threat: actions and reactions
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this special extended episode, recorded in front of a live audience at the World Trade Organization Public Forum, we consider the present state of ...
Making international trade work properly: conformity assessment
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast discusses conformity assessment which is important to ensure manufacturers of industrial goods comply with international standards, and t...
US trade policy in the first 6 months of Trump's second term
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
July 20, 2025, is six months since Trump’s inauguration for a second term in the White House. Since then, all previous norms of trade engagement hav...
UK-EU agrifood (SPS) negotiations
09 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In May, Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen launched a reset of the EU-UK relationship which included an agreement to ...
Assessing the UK-US trade deal
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last month, Britain thus became the first trade partner to do a deal with the new Trump administration. The deal was limited in its scope - but nevert...
Does UK steel production have a future?
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Steel is needed to manufacture everything from aircraft carriers to ironing boards. It is critical for construction and defence and contributes signif...
World Trading System
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The US has re-set its tariffs on goods imports according to a formula based on the size of that country’s trade surplus with the US – a move which...
UK-India FTA
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast looks at the recently concluded UK-India free trade agreement deal and the impact for UK exporters now that India’s high tariffs on goo...
Top gear or crunching gears: Trade and the auto sector
23 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When long-established international trade flows get disrupted, it's not always easy to predict the consequences. Given the adjustments that the UK is ...
A UK-US digital trade deal?
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The real growth area for trade is in digitally-delivered services. But where there is trade, there is trade regulation. If countries regulate in ways ...
Regional investment zones
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There are now twelve new style freeports in the UK, set up under the previous Conservative government which was convinced that freeports would represe...
What is different about industrial policy today?
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Industrial policy is coming to dominate the global trade landscape and is massively important in political and economic terms as well. Today, as the w...
Trump's New Proposed Tariffs
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Next week, Americans will go to the polls and a new President will be elected. This podcast looks at the trade policy proposal of one candidate, the R...
EU-UK reset
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Labour Party promised to re-set the relationship between the UK and the EU. Now that it’s been in government for a few months - what has changed...
Making the World Trade Organization and international trade more inclusive
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Trade professionals at the WTO Public Forum provide their thoughts on one of the big issues confronting trade policy – inclusiveness. How can we ens...
Responsible consensus: a final bid to rescue the WTO from institutional irrelevance?
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
‘En direct’ from the World Trade Organisation Public Forum 2024, this podcast focuses on the WTO’s decision-making process. Responsible consensu...
WTO reform - Discussion with Ambassador Ølberg the WTO’s Chair of General Council
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The WTO’s track record in updating the global trade rules that came into effect in the mid-1990s is not particularly impressive. How can the WTO be ...
Critical Raw Materials
03 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Critical Raw Materials is the topic for this episode and looks at why they have become such an important part of our trade policy discussions. The con...
Mini deals
26 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we look at trade ‘mini deals’. There is a plethora of international agreements out there that focus on a particular area of trade...
50 years of trade policy
12 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Alan Winters reflects on 50 years as a trade policy expert. Having retired at the end of May, Alan’s long and distinguished career in Econ...
The UK Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism
29 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAM): a trade measure that puts a price on the carbon emitted during the production ...
Trade and economic security
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of ‘economic security’ is now a prominent feature in discussions about trade policy as recent geopolitical developments have indicated...
CPTPP – a ‘regional’ trade deal redefined
01 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Later in 2024, the UK will join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership bringing a whole new meaning to the expressio...
Imports into the UK and the new border control mechanism – BTOM
24 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For three years after Britain left the single market, the UK has effectively operated an 'open door' policy on imports from the EU. Five times the gov...
Trade and agriculture
15 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The UK has a long history as an agricultural trading nation. For much of our existence, we’ve been a net importer of food, creating a free trade eco...
Trade scrutiny
27 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of the Trade Bites podcast scrutinizes the topic of trade agreement scrutiny. In addition to the ratification of the UK's accession to th...
The future of the WTO
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The World Trade Organization's thirteenth ministerial conference (MC13) took place in the last week of February. Trade ministers from around the world...
What do we know about UK trade 3 years after Brexit: good, bad or ugly?
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Just over three years since we left the EU single market, what has been the trade impact of Brexit? British exporters and importers trading with the E...
Nearshoring and Global Value Chains
14 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past 40 years or so, exporters have got used to the idea that the whole world is their marketplace – a notion which has been encouraged thr...
The future of the UK-EU trading relationship
24 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In our latest podcast we look at how the United Kingdom is getting on with its most significant trade relationship, that with its biggest trading part...
Supply Chain Resilience
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Global supply chains have barely left the headlines in recent years. It is a fact of modern life that many of the goods we consume have multiple compo...
The new trading arrangements with the EU: UK-EU trade in goods in 2021
13 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It has been over a year since the UK signed its single most important post-Brexit trade instrument – the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with ...
Reviewing the UK’s first post-Brexit trade deal: UK-Australia
04 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The UK signed a bilateral Free Trade Agreement with Australia in December 2021. This is the first ‘new’ Free Trade Agreement (FTA) the UK has nego...
Emission Critical: The EU'S Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism
28 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode looks at the climate crisis, and specifically the trade policy response to the push towards net zero in Europe and around the world. A wh...
What does an inclusive trade policy mean and how to achieve it?
30 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Who are the ultimate stakeholders in UK trade policy? And how much of a say do they actually have in the policies that ultimately govern us? Things ...
Avoiding a Yule log-jam – how to address problems in the supply chain
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Supply chain issues crashed onto the front pages in the UK this year when petrol stations started running out of fuel. But that was just one aspect of...
Is the relationship still special? UK-US trade in the post-Brexit era
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we’re heading stateside as we take a closer look at the trade relationship between the UK and the United States. In one sense, it’...
An enhanced partnership? Prospects for the UK-India trade relationship
05 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As the world’s second most populous country, India is an emerging player in global trade, and of course it has deep historical and cultural ties wit...
Not just sausages: Brexit, trade and the Northern Ireland protocol
25 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Part of the United Kingdom, but effectively within the EU single market, but still part of the UK’s customs territory – you’d be forgiven for fe...
Trade megabytes – the dynamic landscape of digital trade regulation
21 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Traditional types of trade are regulated by the World Trade Organisation, under rules which mostly date from 1995 – a time when data exchanges were ...
Drowning in red tape? UK business, trade and Brexit
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Up until the end of last year, the UK was part of the EU single market, and British traders had enjoyed frictionless trade with Europe for several dec...
The new post-Brexit settlement for fisheries
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Disagreements over fisheries nearly sunk last year’s trade negotiations between the UK and the EU. A deal was eventually signed, which repatriated s...
Trade with a conscience: Human Rights monitoring in international trade agreements
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the 21st century, international trade has almost universal scope, and the UK, like other developed countries, trades with pretty much every other c...
Buccaneering Britain: freeports, trade and the UK economy
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The government has promised to create at least 10 freeports up and down the country, as a key strand of its new post-Brexit trade and industrial polic...
After the great divorce - the new EU-UK trade relationship
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The UK’s Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU came into force on New Year's Day. Since then, the focus has mainly been on the border issues, ...
Food standards and Brexit: digesting the choices that lie ahead
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This episode examines the question of food standards and how they will affect Britain’s post-Brexit international trade. As the UK leaves the EU, w...
The Internal Market Bill – avoiding trade anarchy in the UK?
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since the Brexit referendum, the trade policy focus has been primarily about how UK businesses will trade with their counterparts in the EU and around...
The trade prescription: securing the UK pharma supply chain in turbulent times
26 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The UK imports around twenty-five billion pounds’ worth of pharmaceutical products each year from a wide range of supplier countries. Even during th...
What's the rush? The pros and cons of extending the post-Brexit transition period
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Britain left the EU on 31 January 2020. But for the time being, hardly anything has changed in terms of the country’s trade with Europe. We’re in...
COVID-19 and global trade – is the system immune to the pandemic?
29 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
COVID-19 has had a profound effect on trade. A global recession is always going to have an impact on trade volumes, but this pandemic has had the effe...
The Missing 80% - Making Deals on Trade in Services
02 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Trade in services is generally reckoned to account for about 80% of the UK economy. The UK financial services sector alone makes a contribution to the...
What's for Sale? The NHS and trade agreements
26 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For many people, the idea that the National Health Service may be ‘up for sale’ in the UK’s upcoming international trade negotiations is a cause...
US-China trade tensions: The threats and opportunities for Europe
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For the past few years, the United States and China have been at each other’s throats, with the Trump administration slapping a series of punitive t...
Open to the world? The UK’s Global Tariff consultation
17 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Back in early February, the Department for International Trade announced that it was seeking the views of stakeholders on what sort of tariffs the UK ...
Going Truly Global: Britain's role in the World Trade Organisation
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After almost half a century as an EU member state, the UK is about to become an autonomous member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). For some, thi...
Dude where's my border? UK, Irish and EU trade post-Brexit
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The question of the Irish border has been one of the most contentious issues in the Brexit negotiations between the UK and the EU. Boris Johnson has c...
How will the UK approve future trade agreements?
27 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Now that the UK has left the European Union, the Government has promised to complete a whole string of Free Trade Agreements with the EU, the United S...
Have we got Brexit done yet? (And if not - what's left to do?)
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Boris Johnson promised to ‘get Brexit done’ when he won the UK General Election in December 2019 - and on one level he achieved that aim on 31 Jan...
Testing the Special Relationship: Prospects for a UK-US Trade Deal
12 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As the UK enters the post-Brexit transition period, Boris Johnson has made clear that a trade deal with the US is as big a priority, if not more so, t...