This article is part of a Synergies series on Next generation trade arrangements for environment and sustainable development. Any views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of TESS or any of its partner organizations or funders.

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The past 10 years have seen an increase in the use of “non-traditional” trade agreements and arrangements (see here and here on trade and here on investment). Whereas once attention focused on the World Trade Organization (WTO) or free trade agreements (FTAs), with occasional forays into mutual recognition agreements, today we see a plethora of different agreements and arrangements. Though much attention has been given to recent US “deals,” there have been less dramatic—though novel— developments elsewhere.

An interesting case study of arrangements that fit within the wider trade regime are the United Kingdom’s Enhanced Trade Partnerships (ETPs)—a term used here to capture a range of memoranda of understanding (MoUs) concluded by the UK on trade and economic cooperation.

The first were concluded with US states: South Carolina (2022), Indiana (2022), North Carolina (2022), Oklahoma (2023), Utah (2023), Washington State (2023), and Florida (2023). Subsequently, the UK concluded four with international partners: Nigeria (2024), Thailand (2024), Taiwan (2025), and Indonesia (2026), along with additional state-level agreements during the same period with Texas (2024), Colorado (2025), Illinois (2025). and Oregon (2025). These arrangements bridge a gap between two forms of bilateral engagement between governments.

At one end of the spectrum sit formalized bilateral meetings focused on improving commercial opportunities—the paradigmatic example being a Joint Economic and Trade Commission (JETCO), which offers an opportunity for governments to meet, customarily accompanied by large (principally business) stakeholders. There is no formal legal structure to the engagement and no formal requirements to meet nor for specific issues to be discussed. They provide a useful moment for governments to bring together business interests and potentially prioritize certain key issues of the day

As officials prepare for these events (that are publicized widely) there is an inbuilt incentive to make such meetings useful. Thus, the meeting triggers a process of scoping and identifying potential “deliverables” or “wins” for the JETCO. Insofar as sustainability is concerned, unless an identified business interest happens to relate to environmental goods and services or wider clean growth agendas, it is not customarily an agenda item. Given their purely commercial and political nature, whether JETCOs deliver is dependent on a congregation of interests, personalities, and timing.

At the other end of the spectrum is an FTA: formally binding legal instruments that often require the parties to meet periodically through committees or working groups to discuss issues arising from specific chapters of the agreement (e.g. on agricultural trade, technical barriers to trade, or intellectual property). As legally binding instruments, FTAs secure commitments to liberalize trade in goods and services or otherwise improve the conditions of trade between the parties as well as a space for closer economic coordination and cooperation. Additionally, in relation to questions of sustainability, FTAs may also include binding commitments to ensure compliance with multilateral environmental or labour commitments, or a set of commonly agreed standards of environmental and labour protection.

That FTAs are legally binding is not only important for governments, which can expect partners to comply with the commitments they have made, but also, importantly, for businesses that enjoy (greater) confidence in the conditions with which they can access a market (e.g. the highest tariff potentially applied to their product). However, FTAs must be comprehensive to be WTO-compliant (Article XXIV GATT requires that FTAs liberalize “substantially all the trade” between the parties), making them harder to negotiate successfully as they will necessarily affect more sectoral and thematic interests than a narrower product-specific agreement (EU-MERCOSUR negotiations lasted over 20 years for example). As treaties, FTAs are customarily subject to domestic scrutiny or constitutional oversight, further increasing political and legal challenges to their conclusion (the saga over the delayed ratification of the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement due to the Parliament of Wallonia’s refusal to ratify the agreement in 2016 is one such example).

Enhanced Trade Partnerships sit between these two poles (Table 1). They are formally concluded as an MoU, which is written and (often) published—as in the case of the UK ETPs. But MoUs are not binding and do not create legal obligations. Nonetheless, these agreements include political statements of commitment. For example, the UK-Thailand ETP Art V(1) “represents the expressions of firm intentions of closer bilateral cooperation between the Participants.” As MoUs do not need to be concluded between international actors (unlike FTAs), they also provide more flexibility in relation to the participants (most clearly the case with US states).

ETPs create a more formalized structure for bilateral trade relations than a JETCO, setting out specific sets of objectives. While they do not require that parties meet to discuss specific topics, they represent a commonly agreed set of priorities which can be reviewed and amended. 

Table 1. Different Forms of Bilateral Engagement Between Governments

While sustainability is not a common element of a JETCO—which prioritizes commercial diplomacy and business interests—an interesting feature of ETPs is that they include multiple references to sustainability (Table 2). They do this as overarching objectives of the agreements. For example, the UK-Nigeria Enhance Trade and Investment Partnership (ETIP) (2(a) and 2(d)) sets out as its objectives: “promoting a sustainable and modern trade partnership for Nigeria and the United Kingdom; … [and] … to facilitate private sector engagement in order to stimulate trade and investment and cooperation; and promote inclusive sustainable development in the sectors of mutual interest.” They also reference specific issues of interest to sustainability; either as an objective (e.g. “environment and sustainability” in the Nigeria ETIP) or as a commercial priority (e.g. “environmental goods and services” in the Taiwan ETP or “clean growth” in the Thailand ETP). 

This is not to say that ETPs are sustainability-focused instruments: the ways in which sustainability is identified in ETPs is piecemeal and in all cases prioritizes market access concerns or investment priorities. The sectoral and thematic focus of ETPs—which can be granular (for example in relation to recognition of UK conformity assessed marks for medical devices in the Nigeria ETIP (Health and life sciences))—does not lend itself to a systemic consideration of sustainability or a cross-cutting view of sustainability objectives in relation to trade. This can be contrasted with level-playing-field commitments commonly found in US FTAs, which prohibit the parties from reducing labour standards to secure an unfair competitive advantage in trade (e.g. USMCA, CAFTA-DR. and also found in CPTPP). The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement is the first example of an EU FTA with stronger commitments on this front.

Table 2. UK Enhanced Trade Partnerships: Coverage and Sustainability References

References to sustainability alone do not necessarily lead to any improvements in trade policy. What then does an ETP add in practice? And—given their relative novelty—what could they add in the future?

As can be seen from Table 2, while some references to sustainability fall under wider objectives on cooperation (for example “international cooperation and global governance” in the Taiwan ETP) they most commonly arise as part of a trade promoting agenda; most notably by prioritizing environmental goods and services or clean growth. This includes at some detail: the UK–Indonesia Economic Growth Partnership (EGP) sets out UK involvement in supporting the development of Indonesia’s “Green Enabling Super Grid” and wider renewable energy projects (including tidal).

In this regard, ETPs seek to shepherd investment (in a JETCO fashion) as well as channel the type of market access work that government officials undertake daily, particularly across overseas networks of embassies, missions, and so on. It is noteworthy that the priority sectors map onto UK export interests (many of which, such as clean energy, are referenced explicitly in the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy 2025). While a significant amount of work to improve investment and tackle market access barriers in these sectors takes place privately behind the scenes, more public structures can provide useful “hooks” to prioritize issues or raise the importance of an issue between the parties. One of the most analysed examples of this practice is the WTO Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade, though similar practices take place in other WTO bodies (such as the Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, Committee on Market Access, or Council for Trade in Goods) as well as similar joint bodies under FTAs (see here, here, and here).

In this regard, where the trade is environmentally beneficial (bracketing the veracity of such a claim for the time being), an ETP can provide another avenue to support the reduction of barriers to “green” trade absent the existence of an FTA, which may be costly or challenging to conclude (not least with Taiwan, which raises geopolitical concerns) or not possible (in the case of the US states). And while the WTO committee system continues to function—with a reduction in new formal disputes being filed because of the Appellate Body crisis—attention will necessarily fall to all available alternative forums to help drive progress. 

The concern in relation to ETPs, however, is that as the structure borrows much from the practice of JETCOs, and as there is no formalized multistakeholder mechanism (such as a Domestic Advisory Group under an EU or UK FTA, which requires the inclusion of civil society voices), there is little counterpoint to claims by business that they do support environmental goods and services. In short, ETPs prioritize offensive trade interests, which are only linked to wider policy goals indirectly through national strategies (in the case of the UK, the industrial and trade strategies among others). This can leave sustainability instrumentalized (“greenwashing” export opportunities) with little by way of formal mechanisms to correct information. To remedy the information asymmetry available to officials, ensuring the inclusion of key civil society partners and/or academic expertise would help, as would the adoption of common principles of what constitutes, for example, an environmental good or service (the Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability provides here a model for inspiration). 

Effective work under ETPs could pay sustainability dividends later. ETPs can act as precursors to FTAs (as was the case with the UK-India agreement) and there is a link between the priorities of ETPs and improving the uptake of FTAs by business: currently many businesses in Nigeria have access to unilateral preferences offered to developing countries by the UK (under the Developing Country Trading Scheme (DCTS)—known in most countries as the Generalised Scheme of Preferences). Improved uptake of DCTS preferences in Nigeria is one focus of the ETIP, where ongoing work has taken place. There is evidence that where businesses use unilateral preferences, they are more likely to use the preferences under FTAs.

Similarly, ETPs can also support important work in the space of regulatory diplomacy. Again, the Nigeria ETIP is a good example. Ministers met within a year of its conclusion to review progress under the UK-Nigeria Standards Partnership Programme supporting cooperation between the British Standards Institution with the Nigeria National Quality Council and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria. Standards are important for many traders, but they also have a particularly important role to play in relation to environmentally sound trade, which depends on standards to secure consumer confidence.

ETPs can act as a bridge between the business focus of JETCOs and the governmental focus of FTAs. Given the cross-cutting public and private interests involved in securing sustainable development, a structure that supports the work of officials in this space, incentivizes engagement, and gives a clear focus to participants could be a useful tool. Moreover, as ETPs do not replace JETCOs, they should not be seen as alternatives, but additional levers in the toolbox.

Perhaps most importantly, one should consider how the development of ETPs in practice could provide lessons for FTAs, where governments are often too focused on the formal commitments and not the social spaces that they create. The only way to secure these benefits, however, is for ETPs to include clearer overarching and structured signals to the parties that recognize the importance of sustainable development for all activities of governments, both in their capitals and at their diplomatic posts.

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Gregory Messenger is Professor of Trade Law and Policy, University of Bristol Law School.

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Synergies is an online platform featuring expert commentary and opinions curated by TESS. We foster dialogue and incubate ideas on how to shape a global trading system that effectively addresses global environmental crises and advances sustainable development. Synergies draws on perspectives from leading experts and practitioners across policy communities from around the world. We cultivate solutions-oriented policy analysis for a sustainable future.

The Executive Editor is Fabrice Lehmann.

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