By Max Colchester and Jason Douglas
LONDON -- In their heyday, British trade negotiators fanned out
to Japan, Peru, the Soviet Union and elsewhere, hashing out such
delicate arrangements as securing access for English biscuits in
return for allowing in a Russian perfume called "Lenin's Tomb."
After the U.K. joined the European Union, the need for those
talents waned. Then came the Brexit vote.
Now the U.K. faces an unparalleled trade challenge: It must
rapidly agree to new trade terms with the bloc and seek new accords
with old allies and fast-growing markets. The last time the U.K.
formally negotiated a trade agreement was in the early 1970s --
meaning that the country has little expertise in navigating the
ultracomplex world of modern deals on its own.
"I don't think there is any precedent [for such a range of
complex deals]," said Alan Winters, director of the U.K. Trade
Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex.
In the post-WWII decades, trade negotiators were titans of the
British civil service. Their department, once located on the site
of the old Palace of Whitehall, would throw parties in Henry VIII's
wine cellars and dispatch teams of dozens of negotiators to iron
out deals across the world.
Civil servants like Christopher Roberts, the 78-year-old former
director-general of trade at the Department of Trade and Industry,
got no formal training in negotiations. He learned the ropes in the
1960s on deals to export British herring and cookies to the
Soviets, in return for letting in Russian jam and perfume. (Mr.
Roberts said he suggested changing the scent's name from Lenin's
Tomb and doesn't know how it fared.)
Modern deals are considerably more convoluted than in the 1970s,
when the main goal was to pry open markets. These days, dismantling
barriers to trade requires agreement on issues ranging from safety
standards and environmental regulations to labor laws and
competition policy.
"They are getting more and more complex," said Luis González
Garcia, a lawyer at Matrix Chambers in London and a former trade
negotiator for Mexico. "It's not so much about market access. It's
about regulations."
In the coming years, the U.K. will face several distinct but
interlocking sets of potentially tortuous trade talks.
As it extricates itself from the EU, the U.K. must agree on a
schedule of tariffs and other terms with the World Trade
Organization's more than 160 members.
It must also seek to lay the groundwork for a free-trade
agreement with the EU, likely to be no quick task. The EU has spent
seven years talking to Canada about a free-trade pact and the
agreement still hasn't been ratified.
The U.K. will have one advantage over non-EU countries: As an
existing member of the bloc, it already abides by regulations
governing EU trade in goods and services, which, in theory, should
make reaching a deal easier.
"If both sides behave in a rational manner, it should be an easy
negotiation," Mr. Garcia said. The risk, he added, is talks quickly
becoming politicized.
Once the WTO and EU deals are completed, the U.K. will likely
start hashing out new deals with other countries, a prospect
pro-Brexit lawmakers trumpet as one of the main prizes of
withdrawal.
Securing new deals will require the U.K. to leave the EU's
single market for goods and services and the bloc's customs union.
Prime Minister Theresa May's government hasn't explicitly said this
is its intention, and the U.K.'s precise post-Brexit status will
depend on how its talks with the EU conclude.
Britain is scrambling to find new negotiating staff to deal with
this monumental trade agenda. A spokeswoman for the Department for
Exiting the European Union said recruitment is under way, but
declined to say how many of the 400 -- and counting -- people
already on the new department's payroll are trade specialists.
Nearly all the negotiators from the peak days are long retired.
After 1973, when the U.K. joined the EU, the job of a trade
negotiator began to lose its luster. Britons headed the EU's trade
division for much of the 1990s and 2000s, but the commission
negotiated on behalf of all its members, not Britain alone. U.K.
citizens with such Brussels experience might prove useful in
London, but some aren't disposed to give up well-paying jobs there
and are unlikely to be fired.
In the late 1980s, representing the U.K. trade delegation, Mr.
Roberts managed to squeak some agreements through, sealing a deal
to lower Japanese excise duty on whiskey imports during a meeting
in his living room, he said.
Mr. Roberts thinks the job now will require the same talents he
applied then, new complexities or not. He is scheduled to give a
seminar at the London School of Economics to share tips with young
civil servants.
"A competent civil servant should be able to learn the
background in six months or so," he said. His main advice is that
both sides should come out feeling they have gained something.
Resist the urge, he will warn his successors, to "crush opponents
into the ground."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 22, 2016 07:15 ET (11:15 GMT)
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