The UK South Korea trade deal has given contracts the radical option of existing digitally, leaving printers across Britain to wonder whether their historic role in international commerce was an elaborate misunderstanding with a toner budget.
Announced on 15 December, the agreement is intended to make trade quicker and cheaper by recognising e contracts and other digital technology. At last, a British business can sell to South Korea without printing an invoice, scanning it, printing the scan and sending the original to someone whose job title contains the word compliance.
The deal also retains tariff free access across 98% of tariff lines. Economists regard this as a useful number. Ordinary businesses may regard it as a promise that most boxes will pass through customs while somebody opens a meeting about the other two per cent.
At the Office of International Password Resets, export clerk Stanley Dongle welcomed the digital provisions. “Digital trade is efficient,” he said. “Provided nobody asks the system to remember a password created before the company had a website.”
The government says the agreement could boost UK services exports by £400 million, including through better access to South Korea’s financial market. Services travel more easily than crates, although they still require people who understand local rules, clients and why a video call becomes urgent precisely when somebody’s microphone starts impersonating a washing machine.
Trade deals arrive wrapped in signing photographs, flags and folders held at diplomatic angles. The practical work is less cinematic. It involves standards, supply chains, rules of origin and adults saying market access with enough confidence to suggest the market has a reception desk and a visitor badge.
Trade adviser Minerva Invoice said the 98% figure showed the agreement was almost entirely frictionless. The remaining two per cent, she explained, would receive the full attention of twelve people and a calendar invitation called quick catch up.
The digital measures may particularly help smaller businesses, which the government says make up more than 99% of UK businesses. They may now complete cross border transactions without discovering that the final obstacle is a PDF refusing to accept a signature because it has detected hope.
Britain and South Korea already exchange goods, services and culture. Stronger rules may make that exchange easier. The real test comes when a small firm tries the system on Friday afternoon and discovers whether the future has an out of office reply.
The printer has applied for tariff free access to the recycling bin. It says this is the only remaining British export with guaranteed demand.
Source: Department for Business and Trade.
