1. Some initial thoughts on the U.K.-EU trade deal, in advance of seeing the text, which is reported to be 2,000 pages plus...A THREAD (1/10)

2. As has been said repeatedly, this is what was described at the start of the process as a hard Brexit: the U.K. will be outside the Single Market and the Customs Union. There will be no tariffs or quotas but customs checks etc will erect substantial trade barriers in EU trade
3.There will be nothing for services except in areas where the EU will unilaterally grant equivalence. The EU will play hardball on this eg at end Nov EU made it clear that European derivatives trading will be limited to platforms inside the EU or third countries with equivalence
4. There will be areas where some products will be excluded from the trade deal. Seed potatoes has been mentioned - there may be other surprises yet.
5. Who moved? It seems as if the U.K. moved substantially on fish and the EU moved on its initial position on the LPF and the arbitration mechanism: it wanted something which involved automatic ratcheting - it feels more like a standard FTA between EU and non-European countries.
6. It will be interesting to see what role the ECJ has in interpreting any areas of dispute. It’s likely this will be indirect as per other EU-third country trade deals.
7. In economic terms EU-U.K. trade will be smaller in the next 5-10 years than might have been the case of the U.K. had stayed in the SM or the CU. Maybe by 30-40% or so. The deal does not eliminate that economic damage.
8. Is there an upside? Well this is the first time a non-EEA European country has agreed FTA with the EU which feels like a standalone trade deal...
9. It seems very different from the complex Swiss-EU set of agreements and from the asymmetric relationship between the EU and eastern neighbourhood countries. It places less obligations on the U.K.
10. It also provides a base for future U.K. governments to deepen the relationship if they wish to negotiate this. This will not be easy given the EU’s view on the four freedoms, but this deal may be be a template for other types of EU trade deals. ENDS

More from Trading

Many of you have seen the famous Westrum Organizational Typology model, so prominently featured in State of DevOps Research, Accelerate, DevOps Handbook, etc.

This model was created Dr. Ron Westrum, a widely-cited sociologist who studied the impact of culture on safety


Thanks to Dr. @nicolefv, I was able to interview him for an upcoming episode of the Idealcast! 🤯

It was a very heady experience, and while preparing to interview him, I was startled to discover how much work he's done in healthcare, aviation, spaceflight, but also innovation.

I've read 4+ of his papers, so I thought I was familiar with his work. (Here's one paper:
https://t.co/7X00O67VgS)

I was startled to learn he has also studied in depth what enables innovation. He wrote a wonderful book "Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake"


Dr. Westrum writes about China Lake Research Labs: "its design and structure had one purpose: to foster technical creativity. It did; China Lake operated far outside the normal envelope... Sidewinder & others were "impossible" accomplishments,

I love this book because it describes traits of organizations that routinely create and maintain greatness: US space program (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo), US Naval Reactors, Toyota, Team of Teams, Tesla, the tech giants (Amazon, Google, Netflix, Google)

You May Also Like