Customs and Trade News - December 2022

A year summary of the free trade agreements under negotiation. We also outline Switzerland and South Korea which are currently in the scoping stage.

Free trade agreement (FTA) update

As we near the end of 2022, the UK are still in the progress of negotiating a number of new free trade agreements. Ongoing this year is CPTPP, India, Canada, Greenland, Israel, Mexico and the GCC. The agreed FTA for Australia and New Zealand are due to come into force next year. We also have several within the scoping stage, which is before the negotiations begin. These are:

Switzerland

Switzerland is a good market for seafood, with 973.1 tonnes of seafood being exported by the UK in 2021. The top commodities include salmon, sardines, mackerel and scallops. The MFN rate allows the top seafood commodities to enter Switzerland tariff free. We would welcome your feedback and experience with trading with Switzerland so that we can feed it into the negotiation team.

South Korea

DIT has launched an eight week public consultation on an enhanced FTA with South Korea. South Korea is one of the largest economies in the world with a demand for British products and a seafood consumption of 54.97kg per capita (8th in the world in 2017). Seafood exports to South Korea in 2021 were 3,864 tonnes, with molluscs equating to 85% of this. We currently have a FTA with South Korea meaning that most seafood commodities benefit from tariff free entry so long as they can meet the rules of origin. We are looking for feedback on experience trading with South Korea or barriers to trade.

Further information

We welcome comments and feedback from the seafood industry, so your issues are understood and fed into the FTA negotiations. Should you wish to email or arrange a meeting, please contact christina.fallah@seafish.co.uk in the Regulation Team.

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