From the article:
While the public debate surrounding Brexit and its impact has underestandably focused on Europe and the UK, Britain leaving the European Union (EU) could also have a major impact on distant developing nations. Some experts say that 1.7 million people living in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are at risk of falling into extreme poverty as the result of Brexit.
The alarming figure comes from a report by the German Development Institute (GDI). The think tank says that a no-deal “hard Brexit”—and a return to World Trade Organisation tariffs—would mean that 49 vulnerable states will no longer have access to the UK market through an Everything But Arms (EBA) agreement that allows least-developed countries (LDCs) to export to the EU tariff-free. Cambodia—which relies on the UK for 7.7% of its exports—is expected to be the hardest hit.
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Not everyone agrees with the findings of the report. Hannah Timmis, a research assistant for the Center for Global Development, notes that GDI assumes that LDCs would lose all preferential access to the UK market following a no-deal Brexit, with the UK applying most-favoured-nation tariffs on LDC imports. “This seems rather unlikely,” says Timmis. “The government has said that it intends to replicate the EU’s EBA scheme, which provides duty and quota-free access for LDCs, before Brexit.”
Even so, Timmis does predict damage. She also agrees that Cambodia will be worst hit, followed closely by Bangladesh, which is highly dependent on UK exports via its textiles sector which could face tariff increases of 12% if the UK applied EU most-favored nation rates following no-deal. She adds: “I argue that under the most likely no-deal outcome, countries benefitting from EU free trade agreements would suffer some loss of access to the UK, while those benefitting from unilateral preference schemes, like EBA, would enjoy trade continuity.”
Timmis argues that the process for replicating EBA would be straightforward because it is a unilateral preference scheme—which requires no negotiation with third countries—and because the 2018 Cross-Border Trade Act allows the government to introduce unilateral preferences without the active approval of parliament.
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