What is ‘free trade’?

‘Free trade’ is really about regulated trade – negotiating the terms of ‘free trade’ is really about negotiating the patterns of regulation that will provide the foundation for trade.

This is ‘free trade’ in a modern world of densely regulated markets and unavoidably interdependent States. It is an agenda of multilateralism. To suppose that free trade simply happens when governments get out of the way is an exercise in evading complexity.

Seen from the outside one has the increasing impression that those who drove the people of the UK to vote for Brexit and who are now in charge of plotting the future do not even understand the first thing about what ‘free trade’ means today, in the EU or more generally. Sir Ivan Roger's comments in January 2017 when stepping down as UK Permanent Representative to the European Union suggest that that is what it looks like from the inside too.

• Primary Source

ESO: Background information: Brexit: the options for trade http://www.europeansources.info/record/brexit-the-options-for-trade/

ESO: In Focus: Brexit - The United Kingdom and the European Union http://www.europeansources.info/record/brexit-the-united-kingdom-and-the-european-union/

ESO: Background information: Speech. Liam Fox's free trade speech http://www.europeansources.info/record/speech-liam-foxs-free-trade-speech/

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