CPTPP - any advantages of Indo-Pacific agreement?

[HardCheese]

I have an online shop selling sports goods - the European Distributor for a Japanese manufacturer is based in the EU... Could I fairly apply to be the UK Distributor as we're not in the EU, and does the new CPTPP* agreement give us any advantage over the EU distributor?

*The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a free trade agreement between 11 countries across the Indo-Pacific, including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam - and now the UK.

Thanks in advance for any information.

 

[Customs Geek]

Firstly although the agreement is signed In principal it won’t be in force for a while yet. Timescales are hard to judge on full ratification but its likely to be about a year at least.

The UK already has trade agreements with many of the countries individually so for goods there isn’t a big deal of change. What will change is how goods can meet the origin requirements to qualify for trade under the agreement. The draft agreement looks like under the CPTPP you will be able to manufacture in more than one of the bloc’s countries to help goods meet the origin rules

In your case, as for now, the Japanese goods you trade in the EU must have met the origin conditions for preferential trade with the EU to qualify for duty free entry into the EU whereas they must meet the origin conditions for preferential trade with the UK to qualify for duty free entry to the UK. The agreements are separate with their own rules and not interchangeable . So you cannot import Japanese origin goods into the UK that were originally imported into the EU and still get the duty benefits.

Whether there is any advantage for you to be a UK distributor will depend on the supply chain.

 

[thetiger2015]

It won't come in to effect until next year at the earliest and there's more here for everyone to read: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/...oup-as-new-data-shows-major-economic-benefits

UK distribution rights won't have anything to do with the CPTPP agreement. That's between you and the manufacturer. They may already have an EU/UK wide agreement with the current EU distributor and of course, you'll still have the origin issue as stated by the previous poster.

This deal works best for manufacturers exporting solely to the UK market, not the EU. It MAY also be beneficial for UK manufacturers exporting to member states of this agreement but that depends if they have much interest in your products and your export pricing. My guess is that it won't help UK companies at all, it will just allow more cheap imports of lower quality products....again.

Also, some labelling requirements may be changed. Question mark over products containing Palm Oil etc. They may not have to be labelled if imported to the UK under this agreement, which raises questions about importing to the UK then shipping to the EU because the products may be of poor quality and incorrectly labelled for EU consumers possibly?