The US-UK trade deal warmly suggested by President Trump should help insulate the UK from the direct impact of global trade tensions. It signals that the White House has accepted the statistical logic that the US and UK have a balanced trade position. Essentially, each country roughly exports the same amount of goods to one another. Indeed, rather helpfully, according to the US numbers, it exports more. There is no general case that the UK is, in the words and logic of the president, “ripping off” or “screwing” the US, as he has suggested of many other countries and the EU. So a deal to avoid further trade barriers is very much on the cards.
However, this is not the wider-ranging US-UK free trade agreement to lower almost all existing tariffs, which was the subject of so much debate in the Brexit era. It is important to remember that the wider deal was never properly prioritized by Trump’s own team, because, as they told me, they never truly believed that the UK would find it in its interest to make the necessary hard break from the EU.
It is difficult to see that the UK government would want to further aggravate farmers, or its own base, by putting US farm imports or NHS pricing on the table. In addition, on goods trade, the government is already prioritizing its “Brexit reset” – a food standards deal, and some customs arrangements to bring down newish trade barriers with the European Union. Tellingly, the top official on that negotiation was in the Oval Office.
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