As Scott Miller wrote in one of our earliest articles, How Will Brexit Affect the UK’s Trade Relationships, the outcome of the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU) single market and customs union has broad implications for the UK economy and its terms of trade with the rest of the world.
On March 29, 2017, the UK’s notification of its intention to withdraw from the EU under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty triggered a statutory two-year clock for completion. That deadline was ultimately extended until January 31, 2020, when a transitional period began.
TradeVistas originally offered this timeline to summarize key events and milestones between 2015 and the first quarter of 2019, including the resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May and first term of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It has since been expanded to reference the ongoing negotiations that continue in hopes of avoiding a “hard Brexit” on December 31, 2020, reverting to trade rules in the WTO.
For more narrative on how events have unfolded and why, we recommend the writing of Amanda Sloat at Brookings, who has followed the issue closely.
Download the infographic below updated as of October 16, 2020.
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Andrea Durkin is the Editor-in-Chief of TradeVistas and Founder of Sparkplug, LLC. Ms. Durkin previously served as a U.S. Government trade negotiator and has proudly taught international trade policy and negotiations for the last fifteen years as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program.