As part of our Campaign for Social Science Achieving Good Growth project, earlier this month we held an event exploring the key challenges and opportunities for UK trade policy, with a particular focus on how this influences UK economic growth and productivity.
Held in partnership with the University of Sussex and UK in a Changing Europe, the event was introduced by Professor Sasha Roseneil FAcSS before being chaired by Professor Anand Menon in conversation with Professor Meredith Crowley and Dr Emily Lydgate.
Sasha, who is Vice Chancellor of the University of Sussex, welcomed attendees and explained how trade is a key element of the UK Government’s growth strategy, as well as highlighting the focus of the discussion on UK EU trade relations considering approximately 50% of both UK exports and imports being traded with the EU. She also introduced Sussex’s two trade-focused research centres, the UK Trade Policy Observatory and the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy.
Anand, Director of UK in a Changing Europe, opened the discussion with his thoughts on trade. He commented on how trade has become more politicised and that trade policy has come to the fore in popular elections more so than in the recent past. He also highlighted the need for evidence-based material to inform better policy.
Meredith, who is Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge, opened her comments by giving a brief history of relations around international world trade, beginning with the establishment of today’s world trading system which was instigated by the UK and US along with 21 other partner countries at the end of World War II through to the financial crisis of 2008 and to more recent times including the US-China trade war in 2018. She also explored tensions between China’s desire for growth, Europe’s ambition to lead the production of its own green technology, and recent approaches by the US administration over the past few years to protecting the US market to some extent to foreign competitive pressure.
Meredith said, “I think everywhere in the high-income world, there’s this interest in designing a trade and industrial policy that is, sort of, worker first or puts workers first, and the concern is lower skilled workers and how accessible good jobs are to them, and this is a really big challenge for policymakers and for economists.”
Emily, who is Co-Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and Deputy Director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy, then gave her comments, focusing on the UK’s trade policy in May 2025. She highlighted the successful Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the UK and India and then used examples from the recent trade agreements between the UK and US and the UK and EU, to highlight the trade-offs of agreeing trade deals at both a political and technical level. She argued for the importance of process and a consultative approach towards trade strategy and referenced models which could be drawn from to inform that, and for the UK, for its own self-interest, to reinforce open multilateral trade.
Emily said, “Upholding the multilateral trade system isn’t purely a do-good thing for the UK, it’s also really in the UK’s interest. We are a very open economy. We rely on trade.”
In the conversation that followed, the speakers discussed various examples of where trade-offs and tensions might exist between the UK and trading partners in relation to different policies including around gene editing and digital agreements, as well as the relationship between trade and geopolitics.
You can watch a selection of highlights from the event below.