Global trade today is changing so quickly that by the time this blog article is published, the factual detail contained in it may be out of date. In the wake of sweeping tariffs announced on 2 April by the US administration (and later modified on 9 April), the House of Commons’ Business and Trade Committee (BTC) has published a draft ‘Green Paper’ with a 20 point ‘agenda’ on how the UK and the EU might reset their relationship for reciprocal benefit.  The Green Paper comes in anticipation of the May 2025 summit between the UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen and puts a renewed imperative on UK-EU legal and economic relations.

This is potentially for sound reasons. The EU remains by far the UK’s largest trading partner for goods. In 2023 (the most recent full-year data available), the UK exported £60.4 billion in goods to the US and imported £57.9 billion. In the same period, the UK exported £185 billion in goods to the EU and imported £319 billion. Even allowing for the ‘Rotterdam effect’ (the fact that a proportion of UK exports destined for outside the EU are included in these figures because they are shipped via the port at Rotterdam), UK trade in goods with the US is significantly less than that with the EU.

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