Trade in the 21st century

Before 2016, global free trade agreement negotiations between the EU, the USA, Canada, China and Japan dominated the world of trade. After the Brexit referendum in June of that year, regional trade relations between the EU and its neighbours, the UK and Switzerland, took the centre stage.

While many will start (and often end) with news headlines, very few command both the detail of the agreements and an understanding of the wider implicit political-economic context. In late spring of 2021, the tragicomedy of trade in British sausages dominated headlines everywhere, yet few captured the paradox of Brexit’s own ‘impossibility theorem’: trade requires rules and enforcement, and the logic of the Single European Market has imposed the paradigm for those rules. A smooth continuation of EU-UK trade would require, in effect, a parallel legal system that will, ultimately, simply have to copy the European Court of Justice’s, which sets the rules for trade in and with the Single Market. Sovereignty is impossible under those conditions.

The PEACS Academy module on Trade in the 21st Century explores this set-up, its origins and its legacies, and how it shapes the political, business and social choices of governments and interest groups. The PEACS Academy team boasts deep experience in cutting-edge research, advanced teaching and high-level policy experience – in the London School of Economics and other leading universities, the UK government and European organisations, and interest groups throughout Europe.