The double irony of the new UK-EU trade relationship | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal
On 1 January 2021, the United Kingdom left both the European Customs Union and the Single Market. Its trade relationship with the European Union is now governed by a Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), which establishes a free-trade area in goods and services broadly comparable to recent trade deals between the EU and major, advanced non-European countries such as Canada and Japan. To appreciate fully the significance of this new chapter in the EU-UK trade relationship – and the ironies it brings with it – it is useful to examine how that relationship has evolved over the past 60-plus ...