Canada-UK deadlock leaves post-Brexit ‘rollover’ trade deal incomplete

UPDATE
Canada and the UK disagree over whether the talks were suspended or continue

In the UK House of Commons on January 29, Trade and Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch stated “explicitly that the talks have not broken down. We are having multiple discussions with Canada on cheese, in which we have not come to an agreement.”

Liam Byrne, chair of the Commons Business and Trade Committee asked the Canadian High Commission (ie, its embassy) to confirm Badenoch’s statement.

High Commissioner Ralph Goodale replied on February 16 “Canada is disappointed with the unilateral pause in these negotiations. As far as I am aware, since the UK announced its pause on January 25th there have been neither negotiations nor technical discussions on any of the outstanding issues.”

---

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JANUARY 26, 2024 | UPDATED FEBRUARY 21, 2024

The UK paused trade talks with Canada on January 25, 2024, putting on hold the effort to complete rolling over all the trading rights Britain had under the EU-Canada agreement before Brexit, and to improve upon the 2021 UK-Canada deal.

The deadlocked issues included access to the Canadian market for British cheese, duty-free rights for UK-origin cars and other products exported to Canada, and sanitary conditions for Canadian beef exported to the UK.

Suspending the talks is also a setback for Britain’s ambition to secure a strong trade agreement with Canada as a way of developing its ties in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

Two last-minute agriculture proposals land as WTO conference approaches

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JUNE 1, 2022 | UPDATED JUNE 1, 2022

Less than two weeks before the re-scheduled World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference, two new proposals were circulated on the most difficult subject in the agriculture negotiations — including the first from “non-demandeurs”.

The two proposals are from opposite sides on how to deal with domestic support in developing countries’ stockholding programmes for food security.

… This has been updated and re-posted here …

Hamid Mamdouh — WTO reform imperative: a possible way forward

Posted by Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED NOVEMBER 9, 2021 | UPDATED NOVEMBER 9, 2021

This is a short proposal on World Trade Organization (WTO) reform by Hamid Mamdouh, former director of the WTO Secretariat’s Trade in Services Division and a recent candidate to be WTO director-general.

Mamdouh proposes members start from overall principles and cover all three of the WTO’s main functions:

• implementation in the WTO councils and committees (he calls this “oversight”, a reference to “oversee” in Article 4.5 of the WTO Agreement, which defines their functions)
• negotiations
• dispute settlement including the crisis in the appeals stage.

This should be done, he suggests, in a new working party to start work in the new year.

He is not alone. The EU Commission and Council have also floated the idea of a working group on WTO reform in a trade policy statement presented to the European Parliament on February 18, 2021 (page 18 of this). The EU is understood to be discussing the proposal privately with other delegations in Geneva.