Brexit and Breton Agricultural and Food Exports

[eng] The UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020. In the long run, Brexit disrupts trade between the UK and its partners because it alters bilateral trade costs. A stronghold of the French agricultural and food sector in terms of both production and trade, the Brittany region is also an important trade partner of the United Kingdom in this sector. We quantify the potential impacts of Brexit on Brittany’s exports using a general-equilibrium structural gravity model, and propose a methodology for reconstructing unavailable trade data between and within a country’s regions. Expected losses are particularly high for the flagship products exported by Brittany, in particular for meat and meat products. The lower sales on the UK market are compensated by larger exports to mainly non-European partners. The new trade agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom permitted to avoid the more significant export losses associated with no-deal scenarios.