Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for European Transition (in respect of his European Transition responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 2:51 pm on 9 December 2020.
The UK Government leads on international trade negotiations, as I know he would accept, and I imagine would support. So, our task as a Government is to feed in the Welsh Government's perspective on behalf of the Welsh economy, and Welsh businesses, Welsh exporters, into those discussions. They're very much the sorts of things that will be on the agenda of the discussion today.
I think it's very important to see this in the global context. We will want to make sure that any international trade agreements of the sort that he describes will deliver the maximum benefit for exporters in Wales, but also for businesses and producers already in Wales. So, for example, there are difficult judgments that then arise in the context of doing trade negotiations with significant agricultural exporters, and Australia and New Zealand are both in that category. So, the judgments are often quite difficult to reach, but our priority as a Government is to maximise the opportunity for Wales, for the Welsh economy.
But I think I just want to put it in the context that even the UK Government would say that the economic impact of those trade negotiations for the UK is likely to be fractions of 1 per cent. That's not to say that they shouldn't be pursued, they absolutely should, but I don't think it would be right of us to encourage people to expect that those trade deals in themselves can make up for the absence of a good trading relationship with our largest trading bloc across the channel, because we are talking different orders of magnitude, as I know that he will accept.