Scotland's Vision for Trade: annual report January 2026

Part 2: Highlights from Five Years of the Vision for Trade

The past five years have presented some enormous challenges to our economy and approach to trade. We have reflected on some of the key highlights from our work to implement the Vision over the five years since publication on 26 January 2021.

We developed Scottish Government Trade Policy Expertise

EU-exit necessitated the establishment of a distinct trade policy function within the Scottish Government, the development of trade policy expertise on a wide range of complex issues and comprehensive processes for engagement on trade matters with the UK Government and stakeholder networks.

The publication of the Vision played a crucial role in developing that function, providing a framework for the Scottish Government to navigate a complex trading environment and to take a deliberate approach to the role that trade could and should play in contributing to wider governmental ambitions. It allowed us to identify concrete actions that the Scottish Government can take to improve the trading environment, while applying our principles. It also allowed us to identify specific actions for the UK Government to take, where levers are currently reserved.

We supported business to navigate the economic challenges from EU-Exit

The previous five years have witnessed unprecedented economic challenges globally and within the UK, including COVID-19, EU-exit, global conflicts and the impact of US trade policies. The Vision has provided a framework to navigate those challenges, enabling us to support our businesses and exporters while applying a principle-based approach to our decisions.

EU-exit has been the defining economic challenge of recent times and the Scottish Government has worked to minimise the damage for people and businesses in Scotland. Our actions have included:

• prioritising the maintenance of the UK’s EU ‘data adequacy’ assessment so that UK firms can continue to do business freely with their EU counterparts.
• addressing barriers to Scottish services professionals practicing in Europe, for example UK lawyers practicing in Luxembourg.
• and most recently, engaging with the UK Government on the trade elements of the reset in relations with the EU, particularly the SPS Agreement.

We have also placed a strong focus on addressing market access barriers, developing a methodology to prioritise those barriers with the biggest impacts for Scottish businesses, and collaborating closely with the UK Government to work to have the barriers lifted.

We advanced Scotland’s interests in UK Trade Agreements

Following EU-exit, the UK Government began the negotiation of a series of new trade agreements with global partners. The Scottish Government has advocated for Scotland’s interests and policy priorities in these new UK trading relationships, including through 14 formal new FTA negotiations and numerous other non-binding trade agreements and memorandums of understanding.

A key success of recent years has been securing an information sharing agreement between the UK and Devolved Governments for trade negotiation text. While initially the UK Government only shared information relating to the areas it considered devolved, since 2023 text relating to most areas of trade negotiations has been shared with Devolved Governments. This has supported more meaningful engagement in these negotiations, and improved our capacity to represent Scottish Government interests and maximise opportunities for Scottish businesses. However, some key material is still not shared with us, and in any case information is not the same as involvement. We continue to make the case for a guaranteed role for the Scottish Government and Parliament in all stages of the formulation, negotiation, agreement and implementation of UK trade deals.

Key wins from our engagement with UK Government on trade agreements include:

• ensuring that short-term market access gains are not prioritised over longer terms economic, social and environmental goals. For example, through advocating for the maintenance of food safety and animal welfare standards in all UK trade agreements.
• maintaining red lines around the protection of the NHS.
• supporting positive FTA text on climate, such as in the UK-New Zealand FTA.
• ensuring that negative impacts of the UK-Australia FTA on Scotland’s food and drink producers are not replicated in other trade agreements. The UK-India FTA, for example, is much more positive in terms of opportunities for those sectors.
• informing the UK’s approach to a potential SPS agreement with the EU, which closely aligns with the proposed approach set out by the Scottish Government.

We have also been active in undertaking the necessary implementing legislation for new trade arrangements, for example introducing a statutory definition of ice wine into Scottish legislation to comply with the terms of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-pacific Partnership (CPTPP). This has ensured businesses in Scotland are able to take advantage of these new arrangements and that Scottish Ministers remain compliant with their international obligations.

We built an evidence base on the impacts of trade on people, businesses and the economy in Scotland and took action to increase benefits from trade

While trade generally brings benefits to a country’s economy, there is no guarantee that these positive impacts will felt by all in society and some groups can lose out. Over the last five years we have built evidence of the impacts of trade on people, businesses and the economy across Scotland in a variety of ways. For example, in 2022 we conducted a stakeholder roundtable on the differential impacts of trade on different parts of society, and engaged with the Governments of Canada, New Zealand and the United States to learn from their approach (given their longer experience in considering these issues). In 2024, we also hosted a roundtable in Brussels with high-level EU and diplomatic representatives, furthering our understanding of different approaches to identifying and addressing those differential impacts, and allowing us to demonstrate the Scottish Government’s innovative work in an area with no easy answers.

The Scottish Government also undertook detailed analysis, published in January 2025, to model the impacts of free trade agreements on the Scottish economy. That modelling has directly informed our engagement with the UK Government on priority sectors in FTAs (See Page 6).

We advanced policy significantly on gender and trade, particularly in relation to the support of women-led businesses, by developing our understanding of the gender export gap through research (See also Page 8), and detailed engagement with stakeholders. This included a key workshop in 2024, which brought together women-led businesses, their representative agencies, academics and SDI to hear their views and ideas about practical actions that the Scottish Government and its agencies could take. As set out on Page 8, we are taking action to address the gender export gap through a variety of measures, including by increasing the number of women who participate in international trade missions, a commitment in the 2025-2026 Programme for Government.

We made our mark internationally, showcasing Scotland on a global stage

We have taken advantage of opportunities to showcase Scotland’s expertise on a multilateral stage at the WTO. This has included showcasing leadership on environmental regulation, by representing the UK at the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade Committee’s thematic session on regulatory cooperation between members on plastics regulation.

We also presented recently at the WTO on our approach to gender and trade (See Page 9). As set out above, we have shown that we are one of a small number of governments across the globe putting serious analytical effort into the evidence base on the complex but important subject of the differential impacts of trade.

We built relationships with stakeholders and businesses in relation to trade policy

Since publishing the Vision we have built relationships with a range of stakeholders and businesses across Scotland to inform our trade policy work.

The Scottish Services Trade Forum has been a key highlight. Established in 2022, and comprising of regulators, trade bodies, enterprise agencies and academics, the Forum meets twice a year. The Forum provides opportunities to obtain views on a wide range of services trade policy issues, allowing us to better understand, and better address, the challenges affecting Scottish businesses. For example, the Forum has informed our services priorities in UK trade agreement negotiations and UK-EU TCA Specialised Committees, providing us with insights on issues relating to professional qualifications and business mobility.

We have maintained close working relationships with key food and drink stakeholders such as the Scotch Whisky Association and have used forums such as the Scottish Government’s Food Security Resilience Group to engage with a wider range of businesses and industry bodies on key trade policy issues. Recently, the UK-India FTA has been a focus of this engagement, given the opportunities it presents for the food and drink sector.

We have also worked closely with the British Standards Institution and the UK Accreditation Service in support of their respective roles in our product quality infrastructure, particularly where it helps to facilitate trade.

We are a non-academic partner to the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP), launched in May 2022. This Centre has been a valuable partner in our work to better understand the impact and opportunities of global trade changes on Scotland. Key collaborative highlights have included:

• presenting our work on the gender export gap and modelling the impacts of FTAs on the Scottish economy at CITP’s online and in-person events.
• informing CITP’s research to better understand and quantify jobs supported by international trade through identifying priorities for our policy development.
• inviting CITP researchers to share their work within the Scottish Government, including on the Jobs in Trade Database and on US reciprocal tariffs.
• participating in CITP’s annual Trade Policy Forums, including speaking in 2024 on Scotland’s approach to green growth.

We navigated difficult trade-offs by using our principle-based approach to trade

The principles set out in the Vision have provided a framework for us to navigate policy challenges over the last 5 years.

For example, we used trade-related levers to support action on climate change: the Scottish Government and its agencies ended overseas trade support and promotion activities focused solely on fossil fuel goods and services, in advance of COP26 in 2021.

We have also used trade-related levers in support of human rights aims. In March 2022, in response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine we also introduced trade related Discretionary Economic Measures against Russia, additional to the UK Government’s legal sanctions. We led calls for businesses to sever their links to Russia, where possible, and made clear that the Scottish Government and its enterprise agencies will use all available powers not to support trade and investment activity with Russia. In collaboration with enterprise agencies, we have kept those Measures under review to ensure that they are workable. We also took steps in relation to the evolving situation in Gaza – see Page 10 for further details.