Government poaches trade expert Allie Renison to bolster international efforts
Allie Renison, one of the UK’s most respected trade policy experts, is set to join Government as a senior official at the Department for International Trade.
City A.M. understands she will take up the role in the coming weeks.
Renison has served as Head of Trade Policy at the Institute of Directors for several years and gained a reputation as an even-handed adviser on the UK’s departure from the European Union and what a post-Brexit relationship should look like.
She was outspoken in her criticism of the short notice businesses were given to implement the UK-EU trade deal, signed on Christmas Eve and implemented just a week later.
At the Department for International Trade she will work on the UK’s trading relationship with the world beyond Europe’s borders.
Cabinet Minister Michael Gove praised Renison earlier this year for her “superb work helping British business.”
Renison has spent much of the period after the Brexit vote holding workshops for small- and medium-sized businesses and authoring numerous papers on the way forward for UK trade policy.
The appointment will be seen as a coup for the DIT. The Department is regarded as one of the most effective within Government, securing dozens of ‘rollover’ deals with so-called third countries outside the European Union to ensure trade disruption has been minimised as the UK left the bloc.
Trade Secretary Liz Truss is expected to announce a deal with Australia in the coming days which would see tariffs between the two countries gradually reduce to zero over the next fifteen years.
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