Britain’s newly appointed trade minister, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, will announce on Monday that the UK will work to break down digital trade obstacles to assist its businesses to export their services.
Last week, the UK’s Department for International Trade released a paper aimed at forecasting global trade trends out to 2050, predicting that demand for digital services will treble in the next decade.
“All of us depend on digital trade, yet British businesses face digital barriers in countries who take a protectionist approach,” Trevelyan will say in a virtual speech to London Tech Week, according to advanced extracts released by her office.
“I want the UK to break down these barriers and open up new, exciting opportunities for businesses and consumers so we can see improved productivity, jobs, and growth.”
Typically, trade agreements focus on lowering trade barriers for products, but since exiting the European Union, Britain has pushed to add agreements on digital trade and shared standards in professional services to help the service sector expand.
Trevelyan will deliver her first address as Secretary of State since assuming office last week to lay out the department’s strategy for influencing international digital policy. This will entail building digital trade cooperation through free trade agreements. Trevelyan’s objectives include stronger consumer and intellectual property rights, as well as encouraging the development of digital trade platforms like e-contracting.
The department wants to make it easier and cheaper for businesses that use data to trade internationally by advocating for free and trusted cross-border data flows, according to the department, which said the digital sector contributed 150.6 billion pounds to the UK economy in 2019 and employed 4.6 percent of the national workforce.
