Following Brexit (the withdrawal of the UK from the EU and the European Atomic Energy Community at the end of 31 January 2020), the British government stated that it hoped to reach a new trade agreement with Canada to be modelled after the Canada–EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, the first free-trade deal for which Canadian provinces were directly involved at every stage of negotiations. In the UK, while there are mechanisms for the involvement of devolved regions in European policy, there is no clear constitutional doctrine as to the roles they should play in elaborating trade policy more generally. Moreover, the asymmetric nature of the UK’s devolution system complicates the involvement of its devolved governments in trade negotiations. By providing a specific focus on the cases of Quebec and Scotland, this article provides a comparison of substate governments’ roles in trade negotiation and trade promotion. It concludes that, while there seems to be only limited scope for substate governments’ formal input into future trade negotiations, their trade and investment promotion organizations allow them to pursue different objectives over trade outcomes within a unified national framework.

英国脱欧后（英国于2020年1月31日从欧盟和欧洲原子能共同体撤出），英国政府表示希望与加拿大达成新的贸易协定，以加拿大-欧盟全面协议为蓝本《经济贸易协定》是加拿大各省在谈判的每个阶段直接参与的第一项自由贸易协定。在英国，尽管存在使权力下放地区参与欧洲政策的机制，但对于它们在更广泛地制定贸易政策中应发挥的作用，尚无明确的宪法学说。此外，英国权力下放制度的不对称性质使其下放政府参与贸易谈判变得复杂。通过特别关注魁北克和苏格兰的案件，本文对次州政府在贸易谈判和贸易促进中的作用进行了比较。结论是，虽然次州政府对未来贸易谈判的正式投入似乎只有有限的范围，但其贸易和投资促进组织允许它们在贸易方面追求不同的目标。在统一的国家框架内取得成果。