Brexit Damage Limitation: Tariff-jumping FDI and the Irish Agri-Food Sector
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SUN, XIAOLU, Brexit Damage Limitation: Tariff-jumping FDI and the Irish Agri-Food Sector, Trinity College Dublin.School of Business, 2020Download Item:
Abstract:
The momentous Brexit has been attracting worldwide attention since the United Kingdom announced its intention to leave the European Union after the national referendum on 23 June 2016. Despite the tortuous negotiations during the past two and a half years, the future relationship between the UK and EU is still uncertain to date. It is likely that no-deal Brexit will occur at the end of October 2019, especially since Boris Johnson took office as the British prime minister in June. Whatever agreements the UK will conclude with the EU, Brexit would have a particularly detrimental impact on agricultural trade between the two economies without any doubts. The agri-food sector of Ireland would be among the first to suffer due to its close trade relations with the UK. Moreover, Ireland is the only country that has a land border with the UK. It has been observed that some Irish agri-business firms have engaged in precautionary tariff-jumping into the UK market in the last few decades. In contrast, FDI in the UK's financial services flows into Ireland in the form of establishing or expanding operations to insure against the anticipation of the UK losing access to the European Single Market. This is a precautionary 'non-tariff barrier jumping' FDI. Since agricultural products are easy to incur the highest tariff rates, this research is motived to provide an insight into reducing Brexit damage by attracting tariff-jumping FDI from the UK into Ireland. By comparing export structure and comparative advantage of the UK and the Irish beef products and dairy products, three paper finds: First, the UK is the most critical export market for both Irish beef products and dairy products. Second, it should be possible for the Irish beef sector to capture the potential EU market vacuum caused by Brexit. However, losses will still arise because of differences in market size. Third, it provides a way to limit the Brexit damage on the Irish dairy sector by targeting tariff-jumping foreign investment from the UK into Ireland in order to allow UK firms to retain access to the EU market.
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Author: SUN, XIAOLU
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Trinity College Dublin. School of Business. Discipline of Business & Administrative StudiesType of material:
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