Brexit and trade discussions between the UK and the EU are likely to involve significant amounts of time and energy spent on the issue of regulations—how far can/is the UK able to diverge from existing EU regulations?  While this may seem a topic of interest to only trade nerds and lawyers, it matters a lot to businesses of all sizes.  The question of regulatory convergence or divergence is a problem everywhere. The UK and EU are currently unwinding decades of increasingly close regulatory patterns that encompass all manner of topics—from agriculture to services to health.  Most other countries and regions are less tightly intertwined, but the basic issues remain similar. Regulations are typically put in place to ensure the health and safety of domestic consumers or to protect plant and animal life and health.  There are often other reasons for imposing trade-related regulations, but these are the primary objectives. To understand why regulations matter to firms in trade, it is easiest to start with a simple example—a company that makes tables and then sells them into Europe.