Politicisation and the Role of Business in Trade Negotiations

The changing geo-political landscape has shifted focus from generalised normative preferences in trade policy towards more realist goals that seek to create the best advantage for a country under given circumstances. Consequently, as trade issues have become linked to polarised debates including on immigration and environmental issues amongst others, politicisation of trade negotiations has received significant attention. In this paper, we hypothesise that the extent of politicisation of trade negotiation issues is linked to the dominance of the key narratives on the issue. We also assess the role of business response on the issues and how these develop and link with politicisation patterns over the course of negotiations.

Using big data from news media articles complemented with evidence from semi-structured interviews, we analyse politicisation and the role of businesses in the context of UK–India trade negotiations (2022–24) towards a free trade agreement. We analyse politicisation patterns identifying UK–India trade negotiation issues that have been salient and with several actors engaging with different views. We identify five specific sets of cross-sectoral trade negotiation issues in relation to labour, environment, migration, regulations, and pharma with differences in the extent of politicisation. Our analysis shows the increasing politicisation of the specific issues on labour and migration rooted in polarisation of views across actors in India and the UK. As dominant narratives emerged on these and other issues and became more pronounced during the trade negotiations, we find evidence of business organisations’ engagement and influence on the extent of politicisation depending on the type of trade issue and how it is debated in the media. Increasing outsider lobbying from businesses can amplify the extent of politicisation, but this is likely for issues which can arguably yield benefits for both trade partners in negotiations.