British firms must go on the offensive to take advantage of new export routes opened up by Brexit, from the Silk Road to the Silicon Road.
New Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the country must pivot from defence to offence to drive economic growth forward, in a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank in London this week.
She highlighted key areas for action:
- To move from defence to offence with free trade
- To secure a place in the Trans-Pacific Partnership
- To become a leader in digital trading and double our capacity
Ms Truss, promoted this week in a cabinet reshuffle, gave the speech earlier in the week while still Secretary of State for International Trade.
It came as it emerged British traders paid an additional £600m in customs duties over the first half of 2021 due to complications arising from the rules of origin in the UK’s trade agreement with the EU – a deal which nominally removed tariffs for all goods.
HMRC data analysed by the Guardian newspaper, showed that businesses paid £2.2bn in customs duties compared with £1.6bn in the same six-month period last year. Around 2,000 food products were affected by rules of origin.
But Ms Truss was upbeat and said that since leaving the EU, the UK trade focus has concentrated on the Far East and the Pacific regions and the trans-Pacific trading bloc including Canada, Australia, Japan and Singapore.
She set out the next phase of the UK’s trade strategy and explained why it is time to “move from defence to offence in trade” in order to drive a free trade revival in regions outside London and deliver the Government’s levelling up agenda.
She said: “We want to attract the world’s top investors. We have struck deals so far covering 68 countries plus the EU, worth £744 billion. We are in negotiations now on the Trans-Pacific Partnership which is one of the world’s largest free trade areas by the end of 2022.
“We are forging modern trade routes taking us from the Silk Road to the Silicon Road. And we are playing to our strengths as the world’s second-largest services exporter and, for me, the world’s most innovative economy.”
A Department for International Trade report has forecast that demand for digital services will double in the next decade, with the Indo-Pacific region accounting for 56 per cent of global GDP growth and 44 per cent of global import demand growth over the next 30 years
Ms Truss added that we are seeing demand booming for all of the types of key industries Britain specialises in, from life sciences to media, in a global market which could be worth £9 trillion by 2030.
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