Written submission from Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP) (ELG0030)

House of Commons Business and Trade Committee

Inquiry on Export-led growth

Written evidence from the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP)

Contributors:

Facundo Albornoz, Ingo Borchert, Mattia Di Ubaldo, Michael Gasiorek,

Guillermo Larbalestier, Minako Morita-Jaeger

This written evidence responds to the following questions: Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q5. We provide recommendations at the end of each section.

Summary:

1. Gains from trade materialise through increases in both exports and imports. While export can lead to more sales and stimulate productivity and innovation through learning from competitors, imports give access to cheaper and better inputs, and provide consumers with cheaper and more varied products. Both directions of trade are therefore equally important for growth and welfare.
2. We provide an indicative data-driven analysis of UK exports which identifies products in a wide range of sectors that are important both in terms of the amount and the growth of exports, as well as products that are becoming more important in the UK’s export basket relative to that of the rest of the world. We have also identified for which of these products export opportunities could arise for UK firms exporting to China, the USA, and Germany.
3. Predicting which goods and markets could represent favourable opportunities for the UK to grow its exports is challenging, however, and a data-driven analysis cannot inform on new opportunities, i.e. products not yet exported or markets not yet served. We believe, therefore, that in order for the UK to grow its export performance, creating the right enabling environment, i.e. the best conditions that can facilitate exporting activities, is more important than targeting specific products and countries.
4. Services trade should be a central part of the UK’s export-led growth strategy, given that the service sector accounts for 80% of GDP and total services exports exceeded £400 billion in 2022, about as much as goods exports.
5. Whilst the UK is less dependent on the EU for its services exports and could potentially reorient its growth efforts towards boosting trade with non-EU partners, the EU-27 still accounts for the largest single share of services exports. Hence, seeking better export conditions vis-à-vis the EU, possibly via the upcoming UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) review, appears as an important strategy.  Services exports would benefit particularly from enhanced mutual recognition for services professionals, improved mobility for business personnel, access for financial services, and maintaining the EU’s adequacy decision for personal data flows.
6. Imports of services are as salient for growth and productivity as imports of goods, perhaps even more so given the secular trend of using ever more services as inputs into production and exports.  Producer input services, often imported, are a major factor behind the export competitiveness of UK manufacturing exports.  Thus, policies governing the import of services, and inward investment in services sectors, must be part and parcel of an export-led growth strategy.
7. Traditional Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) do not appear the best policy tool to liberalise and grow services trade. Sector-specific deals, in particular areas such as digital trade, on the movement of personnel via preferential visa regimes, or mutual recognition agreements between regulatory regimes can deliver more flexible and more easily accomplishable gains compared to a full-fledged FTA.
8. Successful exporting necessitates the adaptation of products to diverse markets, an understanding of varying demand idiosyncrasies, the identification of reliable distributors, investment in marketing, and the management of timing and distribution continuity. Effective Export Promotion Programs play a crucial role in bolstering export activities.
9. Optimal Export Promotion Programs should strive to maximize learning effects by encouraging gradual and incremental entry of firms into export markets. If firms can gauge their export potential through initial operations, providing a modest one-time subsidy to explore foreign markets could foster experimentation and enhance the learning process. With such measures, the UK can cultivate a supportive ecosystem that promotes learning and experimentation among businesses seeking to expand internationally.
10. Whether FTAs are fit for the future or not depends on how existing FTAs are used, and how one can improve them, if necessary. To stimulate exports, the UK should prioritize upgrading the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU, over signing additional FTAs.
11. An overarching problem of FTAs, however, especially bilateral FTAs, is the creation of spaghetti bowl effects. Multi-layered different rules are not helpful for business and UK’s export-led growth strategy in the long run. In this context, ‘plurilateralising’ bilateral FTAs could help promote exports.
12. Any future growth strategy, including one led by exports, will have to consider its climate and environmental implications. The three most recent UK FTAs (the EU-UK TCA, and the FTAs with Australia and New Zealand) feature ambitious provisions related to the fight against climate change. Other leading international actors and trade blocs (the US, RCEP, CPTPP), however, have not yet endorsed climate change mitigation as an explicit objective.  This will present challenges in future FTA negotiations for the UK if it intends to maintain its high level of commitments towards environmental and climate goals.
13. The Government’s 12-point Export Strategy features some positive initiatives, such as those related to financial support for exporters, but lacks clarity on how to address the challenging barriers to trade with the EU created by Brexit.
14. The 12-point Export Strategy recognises the impediments arising from non-tariff barriers, but makes no mention of possible interventions to reduce them. For the UK, it is imperative to lower costs for producers, by avoiding the duplication of conformity assessment procedures, reducing as much as possible divergence in product standards, minimising inspections and shipping delays. These steps require negotiating mutual recognition agreements with trade partners, or unilaterally (and strategically) aligning regulations and standards to those of the most important trade partners in key industries
15. The 12-point Export Strategy has completely forgotten the role of imports. In an interconnected world, with UK firms strongly embedded in value chains with EU firms, facilitating trade in both directions appears critical. To foster productivity and growth, lowering import barriers and making sure that UK firms remain connected to international supply chains in high-productivity industries is of the same (if not higher) importance as maximising exporting opportunities.
16. The UK will also need to think about emerging issues, such as the climate policies adopted by the US and the EU, which might induce shifts in supply chain activity. A risk assessment of existing exports should therefore be part of the UK’s export strategy.

Written submission from Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP) (ELG0030)

Full response:

Foreword on gains from trade:

International trade is an important driver of economic growth, and so-called ‘gains from trade’ materialize through a variety of channels. It is therefore crucial to stress that, while attempting to increase exports is often a priority for governments of both developed and developing countries, a substantial fraction of what countries gain from trade comes through higher imports. For example, on the one hand, increasing exports can lead to more sales and higher profits for firms (especially if foreign countries are growing faster), it allows the exploitation of economies of scale and to extend a product’s life-cycle, it stimulates higher efficiency and technological upgrading through learning from foreign competitors and investments made from exports proceeds. On the other hand, imports give firms access to cheaper and/or higher quality (or high-tech) inputs, stimulate productivity through tougher competition, provide consumers with cheaper and more varied products. Furthermore, production along supply-chain activities is inherently bi-directional, i.e., necessitates several border crossings both in and out of a country.

Recommendation:

• We therefore recommend that equal attention should be given to facilitating both exports and imports, as they are inevitably interlinked activities, and both contribute to increasing growth and welfare for firms and consumers.

What are the new or growing opportunities for exports which can drive UK economic growth? How can these be exploited?

Trade in goods

1. Success in export markets depends on:

(a) competitiveness: which may be driven by broader comparative advantage considerations, such as good availability of skilled labour, and will also be affected by trade barriers between countries which may be simply geographic, e.g. distance, but is also driven by policy (tariffs, regulations);

(b) demand for UK goods, which will be driven by a number of factors ranging from demand for different varieties of goods (which may also be purchase from elsewhere), to niche specialisation in specific products or services as inputs into supply chains.

2. In this context, predicting which goods and markets could represent favourable opportunities for the UK to grow its exports, and therefore spur economic growth, is challenging. This is due to several “unknowns” related to future trade and industrial policy decisions, technological progress, political developments, changes in demand, as well as the impact of shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
3. It is important therefore to signal that identifying new or growing opportunities for exports should, in the first instance, be concerned with identifying the conditions under which exports are more likely to be successful, as opposed to picking particular products.
4. The government’s own export strategy “Made in the UK, Sold to the World” identifies the following priority sectors (section 8): agri-food and drink, financial, professional and business services, creative industries, education, tech and digital, consumer, and luxury goods, clean growth; and then (in Section 13) provides another partially overlapping list, but which also include: defence and security, maritime and shipbuilding, aerospace, space, automotive,  life-science, health-care and chemicals.  What is less clear from the document is the justification for this selection of industries/sectors.
5. Careful data-driven analysis, based on recent observable patterns in international trade, can shed some light on products and markets, and whether or not there are particular characteristics of these that UK firms might target to successfully stimulate exports. Here we present such an analysis for goods trade. This is not intended to be exhaustive, but indicative.
6. Export growth can be achieved either by (i) increasing exports of existing products to existing or new markets, or (ii) by starting to export products which were previously not exported. A combination of both is clearly possible; in this reply, we focus on the former mechanism, e.g., increasing exports of products currently already exported by the UK.
7. Broadly, there are two possible drivers of increases in currently exported products. An increase in productive capacity on the side of the exporter country, or an increase in demand on the side of the importer country. Again, both channels can work simultaneously, and both should be taken into consideration.

For our analysis we use trade data from UN Comtrade over the 2017-2022 period at the most detailed level available (6-digit, HS classification), and proceed in the following way:

• We identify products with potential for future export growth on the basis of recent changes in trade flows.
• We use the concept of “revealed comparative advantage” to:
• first, identify the products where there may be prima facie evidence of export opportunities for the UK across all countries in the world.
• second, consider what might be the opportunities for the products identified in step 1 in three selected markets: China, the USA, and Germany.

Products with good growth potential on the basis of their relevance in the UK export basket and their recent export performance.

8. We begin by focusing our attention on a small range of well performing products. We use data for two years, 2017 and 2022, and identify, across all the 5,269 products exported by the UK, the 50 exported the most (by value) in each of the two years. The choice of using 2017 and 2022 is so that we can compare the export performance in two relatively ‘normal’ years, i.e. less influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and after the initial adjustment to Brexit has taken place.

-          The top 50 exported products in 2017 accounted for approximately 51% of UK exports

-          The top 50 exported products in 2022 accounted for approximately 57% of UK exports

9. 33 products are in the top 50 list of in both years: these are products which consistently perform well, and therefore might not necessarily present new opportunities. 17 products are in the top 50 in 2022, but not in 2017 – this suggests these could be successfully emerging products in terms of the amount exported.
10. Next, we identify the 50 products with the highest export growth over the 2017-2022 period, out of the top 100 products exported in 2022 (to narrow the search among products with sizeable trade).
11. Finally, we overlap the lists compiled in the two steps above and find 17 6-digit products that are potentially emerging and are important in terms of both growth and level of exports (the list of products is provided in Table 1 in the Annex). These 17 narrowly defined products (out of 5,388 of the HS classification) account for 7.32% of UK’s exports in 2022, and interestingly cover a range of sectors, from precious and base metals such as silver, rhodium, copper, iron and aluminium, to chemical products, advanced machinery, portable computers, medical appliances, hybrid cars, as well as aircraft and vehicles.

Export opportunities identified on the basis of UK’s ‘revealed comparative advantage’ (RCA).[1]

12. As an alternative way to identify export opportunities one can look at the export performance of the UK relative to that of the rest of the World.

Step 1: In which products is the UK doing well in world markets?

• We identify products that have increased (decreased) their share in UK exports over the 2017-2022 period. These are thus products that are becoming more (less) important in the UK’s export bundle and this represents possible changes in UK’s productive/supply capacity.
• We also identify the products that have increased (decreased) their share in World imports over the same period.[2] These are the products for which relative world demand is growing (falling)
• Next, we cross-tabulate the products in these four categories, in order to identify those products whose shares have been growing both in terms of UK exports, and in terms of relative world demand (see Table 2 in the Annex). There are 866 products which fall into this category, and within that there are 401 products where the change in the UK exports share is greater than the change in relatively world demand. Hence these are the products that the data suggests the UK has done particularly well in expanding exports – call these the ‘successful’ products.

13. Once again it informative to consider the sectors / industries into which these products fall. The 5,269 6-digit HS products can be grouped into 97 broader sectors HS2-digit sectors. We therefore count the number of ‘successful’ products in each of the broader 2-digit sectors. Figure 1 below shows all those sectors where there are more than 10 successful products. These products account for more than 26% of UK exports in 2022.

Source: authors’ elaboration

14. In the ‘growth potential’ analysis we explicitly initially focussed on the top 50 exported products. In, comparison, in this analysis we have considered all the products exported by the UK, and thus not surprisingly there is a larger number of industries identified. The key sectors which overlap across these two pieces of analysis are organic and inorganic chemicals; machinery; optical, medical and scientific equipment; jewellery and precious metals. Interestingly too the sectors which emerge are not necessarily the UK largest exports sectors. Hence in 2021, organic chemicals was the UK’s 11th largest sector accounting for 2.3% of exports, and iron and steel was the UK’s 15th largest export sector.

Step 2: which of the successful products perform well in specific markets?

15. Next, we consider how well the UK is performing across these 401 products (the successful products identified in Step 1) in specific export markets. Here we focus on the USA, Germany, and China, as they are all important export destinations for UK firms.
16. With regard to each of these markets we identify for which of these 401 products is the share of imports by the partner country increasing, while the UK’s share of those imports in those markets is decreasing (a more detailed discussion of the methodology can be found in the Annex). One can think of this as ‘missed opportunities’ because these are products which the data suggests the UK is competitive in (from Step 1) but, in turn, is not doing so well in those markets. The number of products which represent these potential ‘missed opportunities’ in the USA, China, and Germany respectively is 104, 63, and 97.[3] Not surprisingly there is considerable variation across the products and market. One manifestation of this is that there are only 6 products, which appears a missed opportunity in all three markets (coal, paper and paperboard, women’s nightdresses and pyjamas, and various rare earths (palladium rhodium and iridium). Another manifestation is that the products between them cover 59 of the 97 2-digit chapters. The five 2-digit sectors where there is the most amount of overlap are: machinery / advanced machinery, organic chemicals, jewellery, iron and steel, and articles of iron and steel.
17. Note that the preceding analysis in Steps 1 and 2 focussed on products where there is already evidence of success. It is also instructive to look at those products where relative world demand is growing but where the share in UK exports is falling – suggesting that (relatively at least) the UK is not doing so well. There are 948 such products (see Table 2 in the Annex), which accounted for 11.3% of UK exports in 2022. In a similar manner, we arrange these into their broader HS 2-digit sectors, and in Figure 2 we show those sectors where there are 10 or more products.

Source: authors’ elaboration

Key points:

1. Just focussing on currently ‘successful’ products there is enormous variation in the products / sectors. They range from agricultural products, raw materials, chemicals and pharmaceuticals to advanced manufacturing.
2. When considering specific markets, the wide variation across market-product combinations is also very evident. This is perhaps not surprising given that market conditions, and market access barriers will vary across countries.
3. The positive message from this is that there is a wide range of growing opportunities for UK firms, and which go beyond the sectors identified in the government’s export strategy. The nuance to this message is that ‘picking’ winners, identifying new/growing opportunities for exports is fraught with difficulties.
4. It is worth bearing in mind what a data driven analysis cannot reveal, and where the limits of this approach lie:
1. At best, this kind of analysis can identify products and markets where there might be potential export opportunities. Supplementary evidence is necessary, however, to understand the reasons for export success so far, of lack thereof. For instance, qualitative analysis (e.g., through interviews, surveys) on market conditions, the relative importance of market barriers, or difficulties experienced by specific sectors. 
2. Analysis of past data, even if up to date, cannot identify opportunities arising in products not yet exported, or markets not yet served (i.e. new opportunities). This is why we recommend that creating the conditions that can facilitate exports, i.e. the right enabling environment, is more important that selecting specific products and sectors. 

Recommendations

• Government should be extremely cautious in policy initiatives directly focussed on specific product or sectors. This does not mean that such policies are always to be avoided, but that there needs to be careful justification for government intervention, with sound reasons as to why the private sector needs support. Those reasons become the basis for the type of policy intervention that is needed.
• Policy should in the first instance focus on providing the right enabling environment to allow successful exports to develop, be this with regard to finance, lower market access barriers, or more broadly support for research and development, or ensuring the right skills base either through education and training and or through migration policy.
• We recommend that a more comprehensive analysis of both goods and services trade is undertaken, in order to provide an evidence-base for product / sector identification. Another possible extension could consist in identifying, for specific products that the UK is exporting successfully, which markets the UK is currently not serving successfully.

Trade in services

Direct exports of services

18. Trade policy in general, and export promotion in particular, has traditionally focused on goods trade.  Yet services should be the UK’s primary focus in a growth strategy. This conclusion derives partly from the size of service industries in domestic output (80% of GDP) and partly from the very strong position of the UK as an international exporter of services. In fact, the UK’s value of services exports is roughly as high as the value of its goods exports: £401bn worth of total services exports in 2022, compared with £414bn goods exports (ONS 2023).  Figure 3 demonstrates that this equality of goods and services exports is the culmination of a decades-long trend during which services exports became ever more successful. 

Figure 3: Evolution of relative composition of UK goods and services exports, 1997-2022

Source: ONS Balance of Payments statistics, Table B.1 (current account credits), authors’ elaboration.

19. The share of ‘other commercial services’, which excludes Travel, Transportation and Government services, in total exports is one of the highest shares in the world, second only to Israel and way ahead of economies such as the EU-27 or the United States (cf. Figure 4).  It can also be seen that this share has greatly increased over the past 10 years, by some 10 percentage points in the UK.

Figure 4: Share of commercial services in total exports, top-25 major economies in the world, 2011 vs 2021

Source: WTO Trade in Services statistics (‘merchandise’ and ‘other commercial services’), authors’ elaboration.

20. Moreover, the UK runs a sizable trade surplus in services whereas overall goods trade exhibits a trade deficit (cf. Figure 5).  Hence, services trade is poised to play an important role for export-led growth, even though trade policy in support of services exports is more complex compared to conventional export promotion strategies for manufacturing goods.

Figure 5: Trade balances for UK goods and services, 1997-2022

Source: ONS Balance of Payments statistics, Table B.3 (current account balances), authors’ elaboration.

21. It is also not widely appreciated, and worth keeping in mind in the context of the UK’s stellar services export performance, that a substantial share of UK services exports, potentially more than 50% by value, is transacted out of foreign-owned businesses in the UK (Borchert and Magntorn Garrett 2020, based on experimental ONS statistics).  This implies that the conditions for inward investment into the UK can have a bearing on future export growth in services.  Or put differently, maintaining and improving a conducive investment climate appears to be one crucial factor in nurturing future services export-led growth.
22. Specifically with regard to trade with EU-27 economies, a lower share of services trade goes to the EU when compared to goods trade (approx. 40% of total exports in services, and approx. 50% of exports in goods). So, while on the one hand the UK is less dependent on the EU for its services exports and could potentially orient its growth efforts towards boosting trade with non-EU partners, the EU-27 as a bloc still accounts for the largest single share of the total. In that context, taking full advantage of the upcoming review of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with a view to supporting UK services exports is an obvious strategic choice.  Although the TCA is ambitious in a few selected services sectors such as telecommunications, international maritime transport and digital trade, there is a general sense that TCA provisions are a major setback for many services sectors that have hitherto relied on UK regulation being recognised in other EU economies (Borchert and Morita-Jaeger 2021). This is particularly the case for financial services with the loss of passporting rights, and for air and road transportation services, both of which will see their mode of operations severely curtailed.  Likewise, even though the TCA provides for improved mobility of skilled workers between the UK and the EU compared to the default position under WTO GATS rules, the temporary stay of business personnel, for limited categories of workers, is a far cry from the free movement of personnel within the EU. The absence of an agreement regarding mutual recognition of qualifications is also a major impediment to the movement of professionals.
23. Hence, seeking improvements such as mutual recognition (MR) for services professionals with the EU appears fundamental (for instance, in key business services such as architects and accountants). Clearly, any gains from such MR agreements are dampened by lower mobility between the UK and the EU due to the various new post-Brexit migration regimes. In this regard, allowing more flexibility to workers’ mobility (e.g. in terms of types of business activities allowed when travelling to the UK) would be a step in the right direction. Based on a comparison between the restrictiveness of services trade within the EU and outside the EU, Magntorn Garrett (2020, Figure 1) notes that this gap in market access conditions is particularly pronounced in sectors such as ‘computer programming’ and ‘legal and accounting’ services. It is also worth noting that many sectors for which exporting services to the EU has become more difficult feature a fairly large share of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), between 40-60%. Thus, a review of the TCA with a view to improving UK service exporters’ prospects in the EU-27 will likely benefit smaller businesses as well.

Indirect exports of services

24. In addition to the direct export of services as captured in Balance of Payments statistics, services inputs are an integral part of export competitiveness for UK manufacturing products.  Some of these services such as transportation, finance or legal advice may be imported.  In that case, UK policies that affect the import of services can have a direct impact on export competitiveness.

Policy and technological change

25. Digitisation offers as much potential for export growth in services as it does for goods, if not more.  This is because a large share of the UK’s exports of services are believed to be ‘potentially digitally enabled.’  The underlying assumption is that four major items of the Balance of Payments statistics, namely (i) financial services; (ii) insurance and pension services; (iii) telecommunications, computer, and information services; and (iv) other business services, respectively, can all potentially be digitally delivered.  In 2020 and 2021, these four items accounted for 76% of UK services exports. 
26. Policymaking for services trade is a complex area.  In an increasingly digital economy, one ramification for services trade is that certain public policies have a cross-cutting effect on nearly every kind of digitally delivered services.  The primary example is rules governing cross-border data flows.  Policies that seek to address the concentrated market structure in certain services sectors are another example.
27. The UK has also obtained a data-adequacy decision by the EU, which is an essential precondition for a large number of UK businesses to be able to transfer and handle personal data of EU citizens. The adequacy decision has a 4-year expiration date, however, which creates uncertainty for firms. Moreover, two other trends could potentially jeopardise the UK’s data adequacy decision from the EU. On the one hand, the “Data Protection and Digital Information Bill”, which at the time of writing passes through Parliament, envisages changes to privacy protection that could be perceived by the EU as a weakening of data subjects rights and privacy protection. On the other hand, recent agreements with countries from the Asia-Pacific region, in particular the UK-Singapore digital economy agreement as well as the UK-Japan and UK-Australia trade agreements, contain provisions on cross-border data flows that resemble more closely the somewhat less stringent approach to data protection in that region, as compared to the EU’s GDPR. This development is likely to create costs of regulatory heterogeneity for UK businesses, which may have to comply with multiple data protection regimes. In summary, given the overarching importance of cross-border data flows for almost any kind of (digitally enabled) services exports, securing a longer-term adequacy decision would facilitate domestic and foreign-owned firms’ planning and investment decisions, potentially boosting services trade with both the EU and third countries that also received an EU adequacy decision.
28. Consistent with this recommendation, Bhalotia et al. (2023) estimate that substantial long-run gains, ranging between 30-40% in specific service sectors, could be realised from removing barriers to UK services exports in the areas of data flows, visa requirements, professional qualifications, and financial services passporting. These estimates refer to UK trade with Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Australia and the United States, respectively (Bhalotia et al. 2023, Figure 20). The beneficial impact on future UK services exports of (re-)aligning more with the EU is also echoed by the UK Trade and Business Commission, specifically for financial services (e.g. maintaining equivalence for clearing services), on maintaining EU data adequacy, and expanding the recognition of professional services (Recommendations 44-48).
29. In terms of the broader trade policy approach for facilitating services exports, traditional Free Trade Agreements are not always the best policy tool to liberalize and grow services trade. At least in the past, most free trade agreements with services chapters have at best locked-in pre-existing and already applied policies but have done little to provide actual incremental improvements. By contrast, sector-specific deals in particular areas such as digital trade (e.g., the UK-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement), on the movement of personnel via preferential visa regimes, or mutual recognition agreements between regulatory regimes (e.g. that on financial services the UK is negotiating with Switzerland), could deliver more flexible and more easily accomplishable gains compared to full-fledged FTAs.
30. This strategy will also include offering certainty and confidence in the UK’s future regulatory environment, to attract foreign firms to invest in the UK and induce trading partners to commit to mutual recognition agreements.

Recommendations:

• Services trade should be a central part of the UK’s export-led growth strategy.
• Seeking better export conditions vis-à-vis the EU, possibly via the upcoming TCA review, appears as an important strategy. 
• Services exports would benefit particularly from enhanced mutual recognition for services professionals, improved mobility for business personnel, access for financial services, and maintaining the EU’s adequacy decision for personal data flows.
• Producer input services, often imported, are a major factor behind the export competitiveness of UK manufacturing exports. Thus, policies governing the import of services, and inward investment in services sectors, must be part and parcel of an export-led growth strategy.

Written submission from Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP) (ELG0030)

Q2: What do UK businesses need to increase exports? How does the UK compare to other countries in their support for exports?

31. Increasing exports ranks among the highest priorities of any government in both developed and developing countries. The underlying idea is that increasing domestic exports is conducive to economic growth.
32. Export promotion policies (EPPs) are the set of policies and practices aimed at affecting, directly or indirectly, the exports of a country, and countries around the world have extensively used EPPs to increase their exports. For example, EPP agencies in developed countries such as Australia (AUSTRADE), Japan (JETRO), and Italy (ICE) have budgets of several hundred million pounds at their disposal and employ hundreds or even thousands of employees (Carballo and Volpe Martincus, 2010). But similar levels of public investment can also be found in many developing and emerging economies. For example, PROMEXICO (Mexico) and APEX (Brazil) have annual budgets close to or exceeding US$100 million. Empirical evidence suggests that by and large, EPPs are effective in increasing exports (see, for example, Carballo and Volpe Martincus, 2008).
33. One premise underlying the existence of Export Promotion Programs (EPPs) is that successful exporting necessitates more than just the production of competitive products and the provision of high-quality services. UK businesses can tap into their export potential by engaging in competition with imports within the domestic market, leveraging the relatively open and fiercely competitive nature of the UK market. However, while the UK market may offer insights into the export potential of UK businesses, achieving success in exporting extends beyond mere domestic performance. Exporting entails the adaptation of products to diverse markets, an understanding of varying demand idiosyncrasies across countries, the identification of reliable distributors, investment in marketing endeavours, and the meticulous management of timing and distribution continuity. Essentially, exporting represents an ongoing process of continuous learning and adaptation, enabling businesses to navigate and respond effectively to a multitude of market shocks across different regions.
34. Exporting is not a skill confined to individual companies alone. Rather, firms commonly acquire export knowledge through mutual learning, and since the benefits of collective learning are not entirely internalized, EPPs play a crucial role in bolstering export activities.
35. UK businesses can benefit from UK Export Finance (UKEF), a strong export credit agency that provided £6.5 billion in financial support, benefiting 532 businesses, and safeguarding 55,000 jobs in the previous year. This underscores the provision of credit assistance to exporters, solidifying the UK's strong international standing in this domain.
36. However, effective Export Promotion Programs (EPPs) encompass additional dimensions that are crucial, where the UK has the opportunity to demonstrate greater leadership and innovation. Recognizing that firms benefit from learning from the export experiences of other domestic companies (e.g., de Loecker, 2007; Clarides, Lach, and Tybout, 1998), an optimal EPP should strive to maximize these learning effects by encouraging gradual and incremental entry into export markets. For instance, if firms can gauge their export potential through initial operations (Albornoz, Calvo, Corcos, and Ornelas, 2012), providing a modest one-time subsidy to explore foreign markets could foster experimentation and enhance the learning process. By incorporating such measures, the UK can cultivate a supportive ecosystem that promotes learning and experimentation among businesses seeking to expand internationally.
37. EPPs can also include taking the lead in diffusing information about successful export trajectories and experiences that could be assimilated by potential new exporters. Finally, with global competition placing increasing emphasis on product quality, it becomes crucial for firms to ensure the quality of their inputs. This raises the question of which organizational structure enables them to achieve this objective most effectively. Extensive research has consistently demonstrated that firms that prioritize higher quality are more inclined to integrate with their suppliers. Therefore, another area where UK businesses could receive enhanced support in their export preparations is in identifying reliable suppliers within global value chains. As highlighted by Albornoz and Garcia-Lembergman (2023) and Antras (2015), finding trustworthy suppliers is a challenging task, and employing smart EPP (Export Promotion Programs) could greatly facilitate this process.

Recommendations:

• As firms commonly acquire export knowledge through both individual and mutual learning, EPPs should encourage and support gradual and incremental entry into export markets, to allow firms to learn and gauge their exporting potential.
• UK businesses should receive enhanced support in identifying reliable suppliers within global value chains.

Written submission from Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP) (ELG0030)

Q3: Are Free Trade Agreements with countries fit for the future? How will technology, such as 3D printing or lab grown foods, change trade flows in the near-to-medium term future?

38. Concerning this question, we comment on the broad picture emerging from recent UK FTAs, and then make specific references to two key areas: digital trade, and environmental and climate commitments.

Maximising the benefits of existing FTAs

39. How to make use of existing FTAs? FTAs have living features. Whether FTAs are fit for the future or not depends on how existing FTAs are used, and how one can improve them, if necessary. The UK is currently a member of three types of FTAs: the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), Continuity Agreements signed with countries the UK had an FTA as a member of the EU, and new bilateral agreements with Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Furthermore, the UK has signed an agreement in principle to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The role of these four types of FTAs in terms of export-led growth differs.
40. The EU-UK TCA is a unique FTA since it is de-facto an economic disintegration agreement, as the UK left the EU single market. Since the EU market is the most important export market for UK business, the UK-EU TCA plays the most significant role for UK firms. Although the UK-EU relationship is outside the mandate of the Department of Business and Trade, the UK government should prioritise the role of the TCA, or upgrading the TCA for UK exports, over that of other FTAs.[4]
41. As for the Continuity Agreements, their implementation and modernisation are the key aspects for the future. As most of UK’s the FTAs are Continuity Agreements, their effectiveness for UK business should be assessed both in terms of implementation (e.g., an FTA partner’s market liberalisation and regulatory cooperation) and utilisation, both in goods trade and in services trade. The UK government should help firms, especially SMEs, to use the preferential market access (e.g., lower tariffs) offered under the existing Continuity Agreements. This implies making sure that products comply with the rules of origin set out in these FTAs, and that firms are aware of the procedures and documentation needed to claim the preferential tariffs. Although some of the Continuity Agreements, such as those with Canada and that with South Korea, are currently under negotiation for updates, other Continuity Agreements in which UK businesses show interest may require modernisation. It is important that the UK government takes the lead in modernising Continuity Agreements, reflects on businesses reality and interests, and makes FTAs fit for business innovation and technology.
42. The UK has three new bilateral agreements, including the UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), the UK-Australia FTA and the UK-New Zealand (NZ) FTA. While the UK-Japan CEPA is almost a replica of the EU-Japan FTA with limited improvements, the FTAs with Australia and with New Zealand are tailored-made FTAs in which the UK’s business interests are directly reflected. Since these two FTAs can be seen as comprehensive and in-depth agreements, they can be used as a model agreement for UK’s future trade agreements. In terms of promotion of trade flows, however, the role of these FTAs is limited, as Australia and New Zealand account for only 0.9% (Australia) and 0.1% (NZ) of the UK’s total trade.[5]
43. The CPTPP, which is a plurilateral FTA covering 11 countries, has the potential of playing a relatively more important role for UK exports in the future. Currently, the UK has bilateral FTAs with 9 CPTPP members (except for Malaysia and Brunei), hence the scope of extra preferential market access is limited. The main benefit arising from the CPTPP, however, is the provision of a single integrated rule within the Asia-Pacific region. This is especially important for UK exports, as existing bilateral FTAs create segmented bilateral rules that do not fit UK companies’ international business activities and are not optimal to foster participation into global value chains. In this context, ‘plurilateralising’ bilateral FTAs in other regions could make sense economically, to promote exports in the future.

Areas of focus

44. Digital trade: The UK negotiated innovative digital trade provisions under the UK-Australia FTA, the UK-NZ FTA, and the UK-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement. Although these policy developments are important for UK businesses, we have to be aware that an FTA can play only one part in the digital ecosystem. One example is the promotion of interoperability in the areas of trade facilitation, data protection, and AI governance. In practice, there are multiple layers of norms, regulations and standards to promote interoperability at the international level.
45. At the domestic level, policymakers in each country keep catching up, by introducing new rules to reflect the rapidly changing digital technology and innovation, although a huge digital divide persists across different countries. Furthermore, an FTA is not the right forum to address impacts of digital innovation, such as AI, on human rights and democracy. A multi-stakeholder approach is becoming more important to promote digital governance, especially AI, both at the domestic and international levels in the future.  The UK government has to assess well pros and cons of using FTAs as a policy tool from the long-term perspective.

46. Environmental/climate provisions. Any future growth strategy, including one led by exports and international trade more in general, will have to consider its climate and environmental implications. The urgency of addressing the climate change crisis has led several countries to make commitments towards reducing their environmental impact, for instance, by agreeing to net-zero CO2 emissions targets. Trade agreements have the potential to play an important role in this process, through various channels: supporting the transfer of technology and spurring innovation; lowering tariffs on trade of environmental products; lowering trade barriers due to heterogeneous regulations and standards (e.g., energy efficiency standards); addressing concerns about asymmetric levels of regulation potentially leading to relocation of activity to pollution havens (due to different production costs), and therefore helping to level the playing field.
47. For these reasons, integrating climate and environmental objectives in trade agreements has been an area of rapid expansion. FTAs increasingly include explicit environmental commitments of heterogenous strictness, which range from loosely defined ‘best endeavour’ targets to enforceable mechanisms to sanction violations or deviations from an agreed trajectory. In this regard, the UK has taken an ambitious approach, in particular in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with the EU, as well as in its recent FTA with New Zealand (NZ).
48. In the TCA the UK and the EU have agreed on specifying quantitative climate-related commitments and have included strong enforcement mechanisms. The ‘fight against climate change’ has been made an essential element of the agreement[6], which signals the intention of elevating the status of climate objectives to that of guiding principles of the TCA. Also worthy of mention is a “rebalancing mechanism”, which implies that material impacts on trade and investment resulting from significant divergences in the Parties’ climate policies can (in principle) lead to the suspension of the TCA. This mechanism is very significant and new as, unlike more typical “non-regression” mechanisms which focus on preventing the deregulation of current environmental standards, the rebalancing addresses potential divergence in future policies. This implies that the UK and the EU have agreed to keep pace with one another’s climate policies. 
49. Both the UK and the EU have recently (and separately) also signed FTAs with New Zealand (NZ). These FTAs take a more traditional approach towards climate objectives than the TCA but are worth mentioning as they still show a good deal of innovation. The UK-NZ FTA, in particular, contains unprecedented commitments towards the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies. The EU-NZ FTA also features commitments on a reform of fossil fuel subsidies, but only towards a reduction rather than an elimination. In practice, the effectiveness of these norms in both the UK-NZ and the EU-NZ FTAs is mitigated by the different ways in which countries measure fossil fuel subsidies. Nonetheless, we believe that both FTAs, together with the TCA, provide good examples of the potential that trade agreements have in helping in the fight against climate change.
50. On a less positive note, beyond the notable examples mentioned above, the integration of climate objectives into FTAs is not very widespread. Other leading international actors (e.g., the US) and trade blocs (RCEP, CPTPP) have not yet endorsed climate change mitigation as an explicit objective.  This will present challenges in future FTA negotiations for a middle-sized economic power such as the UK. There is a risk that, given the that primary goal of FTAs is to stimulate trade and economic activity, emphasis on climate objectives might have to be scaled back to strike a deal with less like-minded partners.

Strong support for the multilateralism

51. Last but not least, from a wider policy wider perspective, the UK government has to be fully aware that FTAs are a second-best policy option. The UK government set FTAs as the main policy tool to create new market opportunities for UK exporters after leaving the EU. But the problem of FTAs, especially bilateral FTAs, is the creation of spaghetti bowl effects. Multi-layered different rules are not helpful for business and UK’s export-led growth strategy in the long run. The UK government must show strong commitments in supporting the WTO and improve the public understanding of the importance of a liberal open trade system based on WTO rules.

Recommendations:

• The UK government should prioritise the role of the UK-EU TCA over that of other FTAs to stimulate UK exports.
• It is important that the UK government takes the lead in modernising continuity agreements, reflects on business reality and interests, and makes FTAs fit for business innovation and technology.
• Bilateral FTAs can create segmented bilateral rules that do not fit UK companies’ international business activities and are not optimal to foster participation in global value chains. In this context, ‘plurilateralising’ bilateral FTAs could promote exports in the future.
• Multi-stakeholder approaches are becoming more important than FTAs to promote digital governance, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI), both at the domestic and international level.  The UK government must adequately assess the pros and cons of using FTAs as a policy tool for the long-term perspective.
• Rather than pursuing a strategy based on signing as many bilateral FTAs as possible, the UK government must show strong support for the WTO and improve the public understanding of the importance of a liberal open trade system based on WTO rules.
• We strongly advocate that the UK does not compromise on its environmental and climate goals in future negotiations: not to exploit the strong mechanisms potentially offered by FTAs to make important steps in the fight against climate change would be a missed opportunity.

Written submission from Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP) (ELG0030)

Q5 - How adequate is the Government’s 12-point Export Strategy, Made in the UK, Sold to the World (2021)?

52. A comprehensive and effective export strategy should recognize and address the different types of barriers faced by exporters, and correspondingly support their needs. This might lead to two main kinds of interventions, a) product and/or market specific policies, and b) cross-cutting policies. In the first category we can list interventions aimed at lowering tariff and non-tariff measures (notably regulatory barriers), and costs related to shipping, bureaucracy, and distribution. Horizontal interventions can concern the provision of export finance, establishing efficient administrative processes, and facilitating access to the right skills base through well-planned migration policies.
53. The 12-point Strategy (henceforth the Strategy) contains elements of both types of interventions but, it appears rather vague[7] and repetitive[8] in some parts. There are also initiatives potentially of relevance that stand out, however. The Strategy was released in 2021, at a time when the effects of Brexit and the changes introduced by the UK-EU TCA had not yet been fully observed. Despite this, it is striking how little attention was given to the challenges created by the new trade barriers with the EU. Here below we comment on a few selected points of the Strategy.
54. The Export Support Service (ESS – point 1 of the Strategy), the new EU-focused “one-stop shop” created to provide advice and information on exporting rules and paperwork, is the only point of the Strategy which seems to admit that trading with the EU might has become more difficult. A UKTPO report[9] analysing three British Chambers of Commerce surveys reveals that the biggest challenge for UK firms has been increased costs, especially for those working with the new EU-UK TCA, due to red tape, shipping delays, custom and border controls. The ESS proposed by the Strategy looks like a useful service, but it does not tackle the obstacles created by the border with the EU: it only lowers the burden of gathering information.
55. The Financial support for exporters (point 3 of the Strategy) in grants up to £9,000 appears small, but it has some potential under two aspects. First, as we mention in our response to Question 2 above, firms often “test the waters” by entering into export markets with small initial operations. So, even if small, a one-time grant can allow SMEs to gauge their potential and support their initial internationalization efforts. Second, a useful by-product of such a grant can be to learn about particular exporting constraints faced by SMEs, information that government might otherwise struggle to obtain.
56. The various enhancements to the role and range of action of the UK Export Finance are commendable (point 4 of the Strategy), in particular the various initiative in support of SMEs. Firms need to make substantial investments (including in R&D) before entering into exporting, hence the expansion of the eligibility for Export Development Guarantee to companies not currently exporting appears particularly welcome. Similarly, support to a business’ overall growth, rather than to a specific export contract, appears beneficial, to enable smaller exporters to overcome the hurdles of accessing the export market. Also the extended repayment terms for green economy exporters, and the simplified Bills and Notes guarantee, are initiatives that go in the right direction, as they can stimulate investment in environmental products and support small firms with limited cash flow.
57. The most important points of the strategy are point 10 and 12. Making exporting easier (point 10) should be the priority for the UK Government: the relevance of efficient borders and of “effective regulation” are mentioned (although it is not sure what it meant by the latter), but the Strategy fails in outlining a clear plan for how to achieve this. Surely digitizing documents (one of the more concrete proposals) is useful to facilitate border procedures, but much bigger steps are necessary to remain internationally competitive and for UK firms to retain their place in key value-chains. For instance, in a recent article Ayele, Gasiorek and Tong Koecklin (2023) quantify the restrictiveness of the Rules of Origin (RoOs)[10] in the UK-EU TCA and show that more restrictive RoOs are associated with a lower degree of utilization[11] of the TCA by UK firms. The Strategy recognizes the impediments arising from non-tariff barriers to trade (such as RoOs, but also including regulation and standards), but makes no mention of possible interventions to reduce them.
58. For the UK it is imperative to lower costs for producers, by avoiding the duplication of conformity assessment procedures, reducing as much as possible divergence in product standards, minimizing inspections, delays and the risks of rejections at the border. These steps require negotiating mutual recognition agreements with trade partners, or unilaterally (and strategically) aligning regulations and standards to those of the most important trade partners in key industries. The salience for the UK of seeking regulatory alignment with the EU is highlighted in Figure 3.

59. Figure 3 derives from an analysis[12] of the EU law acts included in the Northern Ireland Protocol (specifically the Regulations and Directives listed in Annex 2 of the Protocol, henceforth Regulations), and that impose some form of obligation on firms – be this with regard to product or process standards, labelling, or conformity assessment – shipping goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.[13] These are core Regulations that clearly apply to UK exports to the EU too. Figure 3 shows the heterogenous number of Regulations by broad product categories[14], and provides some indication of the degree of regulatory intensity faced by UK producers wanting to serve the EU. Given the importance of the EU for UK traders, priority should be given to renegotiating the terms of the relationship with the EU, or aligning UK regulations as closely as possible to those of the EU. This is a key issue that is not mentioned in the Strategy.
60. Point 12 (Opening new markets) discusses opportunities arising from new Free Trade Agreements, but fails to recognize the limited scope of this plan: the majority of UK trade is already transacted under FTAs, and the only significant shares of trade not covered by FTAs are with the US and China. Both are unlikely FTA partners in the near future.
61. The Strategy seems to have completely forgotten the role of imports. In an interconnected world, with UK firms strongly embedded in value chains with EU firms, facilitating trade in both directions appears critical. For instance, emphasis is given on aiming for the highest production standards (of environmental and consumer protection), but this requires that inputs are compatible to such standards. To foster productivity and growth, lowering import barriers and making sure that UK firms remain connected to international supply chains in high-productivity industries is of the same (if not higher) importance as maximising exporting opportunities. Recent UKTPO research (Gasiorek and Tamberi 2023) shows how UK imports from the EU have fallen sharply in the period following the implementation of the TCA[15]: recovering those imports should be a key point in a future revised Export Strategy.
62. There is a stark contrast in the approach pursued in the “Made in the UK, Sold to the World” Strategy compared to the Scottish “A Trading Nation” (ATN) strategy:

-          Besides being more explicit about the relevance of the EU market for Scotland and the UK, and the need to support inclusive and sustainable growth through exports, the ATN is strongly based on data analysis to identify priority markets and sectors. Even though the data approach has its limits, as past data can only inform about past trends or trends already taking place (hence might fail to identify opportunities in some new markets and products), a rigorous data-driven approach can help focus resources.  The ATN plan is detailed, is updated over time, and provides new useful analysis tools (such as the “Export value gap” tool to monitor performance of Scottish exporters vis-à-vis their competitors). 

-          Specialization in core products and markets is key for success. Clearly this matters more for a small country such as Scotland, compared to England or the UK as a whole. However, as we show in our response to the first question of this inquiry, also for the UK it is possible to identify specific niches of potential export opportunities.

-          Trade is a very concentrated activity across firms, with few very large businesses accounting for the majority of trade, and many smaller exporters with different needs and constraints compared to the large firms. The ATN recognizes this and coherently segments and tailors support depending on the businesses’ capacity and needs, from political intelligence (for established large exporters), to financial resources (for SMEs), and advice on innovation and entry into foreign markets (for large domestic producers). Advice must also vary by target markets, depending on their transparency and similarity in regulatory environment to the UK.

63. Finally, the UK government will need to think about emerging issues, and how they might impact on exports. For instance, climate policies adopted by large partners such as the US (Inflation Reduction Act), or the EU (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism). These policies will create challenges to UK exports, as they might induce shifts in supply chain activity. This calls for analyses about which products or sectors where the UK supplies other countries and may in turn either (a) be vulnerable to switches; and/or (b) may be an important supplier and thus have less risk. Overall, this implies that an export strategy is not just about identifying where the UK can grow its exports, but it needs to also include a risk assessment of existing exports.

Recommendations:

• The UK needs to negotiate mutual recognition agreements with trade partners to lower costs for producers, to avoid the duplication of conformity assessment procedures and minimise inspections and shipping delays.
• The UK should align its regulations to those of the most important trade partners (the EU), to reduce as much as possible divergence in product standards.
• Regaining lost imports from the EU will be essential to allow UK producers to remain competitive and connected to EU value-chains.
• Detailed knowledge and tailored support are key. The UK should use a data-driven approach to identify potential gaps in foreign markets in products where the UK has a comparative advantage, as well as offer flexible support to businesses with heterogenous needs. Regular monitoring and reporting are key elements of this approach, which could also benefit from an annual report on the UK’s trading performance. This latter recommendation has also recently been made by the UK Trade and Business Commission (Recommendation 58 of the 2023 Report[16])
• An export strategy needs to include a risk assessment of existing exports which might suffer from policies adopted by large trade partners.

Annex to submission:

Table 1: export opportunities in goods trade

Source: authors’ elaboration on data from UN Comtrade

Table 2: Sources of changes in comparative advantage

Note: the first sign in parenthesis refers to the change in the product’s share in World exports, the second sign in parenthesis refers to the change in the product’s share in UK exports

Source: authors’ elaboration on data from UN Comtrade

Note, also, that where the UK is exhibiting negative changes in a product’s export share is not to say that the UK is exporting less of that product, but rather that the product has lost some importance in UK exports.

For each market, we first replicate the analysis presented in Table 2, as not every product is exported by the UK to every market. We begin with China.

China:

Table 3.1: Sources of changes in comparative advantage – subset of products exported to China

Source: authors’ elaboration on data from UN Comtrade

Table 3.1 shows the products where the UK’s supply capacity is growing, and where the world market is growing, out of the subset of products the UK exports to China: 647 products. In 328 products the UK’s supply is growing more than the World’s average.

Then, we use data on Chinese imports to identify, out of these 328 products, which products are growing in China’s demand (columns of table 3.2) and in which products the UK’s share of Chinese imports is growing (rows of Table 3.2). The cross tabulation reveals the following:

• In 63 products out of 328, relative demand in China has increased (over the 2017-22 period) but the share of the UK in the Chinese market has decreased. So, these are products where the UK has growing world competitiveness, in a growing world market, but where export performance to China is less successful. We label these products ‘missed opportunities’, as that likely present the best targets for the UK to grow its exports to China.
• In 45 products out of 328 relative demand in China has increased and the share of the UK in the Chinese market has increased. So, these are products where the UK has growing world competitiveness, in a growing world market, and where export performance to China has been successful.
• In 71 products out of 328 relative demand in China has decreased and the share of the UK in the Chinese market has decreased. So, these are products where the UK has growing world competitiveness, in a growing world market, but where relative demand in China is falling, and where UK’s export performance is less successful.
• In 95 products out of 184 products relative demand in China has decreased and the share of UK in the Chinese market has increased. So, these are products where the UK has growing world competitiveness, in a growing world market, and while relative demand in China is falling, the UK’s export performance has been successful.

To sum up, we believe that the best chances for the UK to grow its exports in China lie in the 63 products that we have labelled ‘missed opportunities’.

Table 3.2: Changes in Chinese import shares for the 328 products[17]

Source: authors’ elaboration on data from UN Comtrade

We repeat a similar analysis for two other key export destinations.

USA:

Among the products the UK exports to the USA, there are 764 products where the UK’s supply capacity is growing, in a growing world market. In 373 of these, the UK’s supply is growing faster the World’s supply.

Table 4.1: Sources of changes in comparative advantage – subset of products exported to USA

Source: authors’ elaboration on data from UN Comtrade

With data on USA imports, we find that the best opportunities for the UK to grow its imports in the USA are in 104 products. In these, relative demand in the USA has increased but the share of the UK in the USA market has decreased. So, these are products where the UK has growing world competitiveness, in a growing world market, but where export performance to USA is less successful.

Table 4.2: Changes in USA import shares for the 373 products

Source: authors’ elaboration on data from UN Comtrade

Germany:

Among the products the UK exports to Germany, there are 813 products where the UK’s supply capacity is growing, in a growing world market. In 387 of these, the UK’s supply is growing faster the World’s supply.

Table 5.1: Sources of changes in comparative advantage – subset of products exported to Germany

Source: authors’ elaboration on data from UN Comtrade

With data on German imports, we find that the best opportunities for the UK to grow its imports in the Germany are in 97 products. In these, relative demand in Germany has increased but the share of the UK in the German market has decreased. So, these are products where the UK has growing world competitiveness, in a growing world market, but where export performance to Germany is less successful

Table 5.2: Changes in Germany import shares for the 387 products

Source: authors’ elaboration on data from UN Comtrade

Annex for question 5

Government’s 12-point Export Strategy, Made in the UK, Sold to the World

1. Export support service
2. Regional offices
3. Financial assistance to internationalise
4. Export finance
5. A joint approach connecting governments and businesses
6. Export Academy - training
7. Community of export champions
8. Champion priority sectors
9. UK tradeshow programme
10. Regulatory reforms
11. International teams for sector and market specific support
12. New trade deals