“Under the protocol, imports subject to EU trade defence measures will always be subject to the EU tariff, even if they remain in Northern Ireland,” he said. “This means there will be circumstances in which high trade defence tariffs are applied to imports into NI but not to imports into the rest of the UK. “Depending on your perspective, this could mean either higher import costs for NI firms, or (relatively) higher protection from foreign competition.” He added that it was possible that the UK could decide to apply similar defensive tariffs but that was “certainly not a given”.

“In the next 10 years the UK will probably have one of the most efficient borders in the world out of sheer necessity, which you could say is a ‘Brexit dividend’ of sorts,” Flint Director of Trade Sam Lowe quoted in the Financial Times.