Brexit Damage Limitation: Tariff-Jumping FDI and the Irish Agri-Food Sector

Abstract

A ‘hard Brexit’ would be particularly damaging to the Irish beef and dairy sectors. The UK also exports substantial amounts of these products to the EU however and the vacuum that restrictions on UK access to the EU market would create affords opportunities for Irish-based producers. The aim of the paper is to assess how these opportunities might be best exploited. The results of a revealed comparative advantage (RCA) analysis conducted using international trade data do not prove encouraging. RCA analysis however implicitly treats the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) as given. Newspaper reports are drawn upon to detail the extent of precautionary ‘tariff jumping’ FDI already undertaken by Irish agri-businesses. These flows thus far have been almost entirely one-way. Flows in international financial services have been in the opposite direction. These asymmetries suggest that targeted efforts by Ireland's industrial development agencies may be able to offset some of the damaging consequences of a hard Brexit.