Exhausting all the options
Charlie Humphreys, a director at Flint Global, agreed, adding that the U.K. would aim for the measures to “act largely as a deterrent, given the harm that economic measures would have on the U.K. as well as the target country.
“Based on the risk that deployment of measures could escalate retaliatory measures in both directions, high thresholds are likely to be put in place and deployment is unlikely unless other options, such as bilateral diplomacy or revised trade agreements, are exhausted,” he said.
Just as the EU has its own anti-coercion instrument, “it’s quite right that the U.K. has a mechanism of recognized routes to address market distortions,” argued Marco Forgione, director general of the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade.
But he, too, doubts whether it will ever see the light of day.
“It’s probably better to have it, but will you feasibly or practically ever use this?” Forgione added. “Deploying a trade retaliatory regime is a zero-sum game because that then itself encourages or incentivizes further action so you find yourself in a circle of escalation. On things like this I feel very strongly that it’s better to have a big stick but talk calmly rather than spend your time waving a stick around.”
In its call for input, the government namechecks the EU’s ACI, which the bloc considered deploying in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats linked to Greenland.