It is of course now clear that the post-Brexit trading relationship between the UK and the EU is to be governed by an FTA, and that Britain will not remain in a Customs Union with the EU. The 17 October 2019 "Political Declaration" between the EU and the UK regarding the "future relationship" explains that the FTA should "ensure no tariffs, fees, charges or quantitative restrictions" on trade in goods, and that the FTA should be "underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition."
Recently, PM Boris Johnson has referred to the EU-Canada FTA (CETA) as a possible model for such an FTA, so I took a look at CETA's provisions on trade remedies. They are minimal, and it is clear that anti-dumping, countervailing measures and global safeguards will remain fully available between the EU and Canada. CETA falls short even of the NAFTA/USMCA arrangements, where FTA partners can under certain circumstances be excluded from global safeguard measures, and where novel trade remedy dispute settlement provisions under chapter 19 have survived the recent renegotiation. But it is not surprising, given that CETA's provisions on subsidies and competition policy are also limited, and indeed not subject to dispute settlement.
For the EU-UK relationship as well, an exemption from the application of trade remedies presumably will depend, in part, on the extent of regulatory harmonization in the areas of state aids (i.e., subsidies) and competition policy. The Political Declaration's section on "level playing field and fair competition" calls for "common high standards" in the areas of, inter alia, state aid and competition, but the meaning of this language is far from clear, and the extent to which such standards will vitiate a need for trade remedies equally so.
Very few FTAs eliminate trade remedies among the parties. Rare examples are the Chile-Canada FTA and, with respect to anti-dumping only, the Australia-New Zealand FTA (in the latter case, CVD was not precluded due to a lack of common subsidy rules). In the closely linked economies of North America, trade remedy use has remained significant despite (or maybe even because of) NAFTA. Thus, it will be interesting to see how trade remedies are dealt with in the EU-UK FTA and, to the extent maintained, how they impact EU-UK economic integration.
