Closest allies, but why does a UK-US trade deal seem elusive?
- Prospect of a UK-US free-trade agreement appears distant as negotiations stall
- A US deal was meant to be one of the big prizes for the UK after Brexit
A free-trade deal with its closest ally United States was meant to be the cornerstone of the UK’s commercial policy after it had left the European Union.
But five years after a “massive” deal was promised to London by then US president Donald Trump, and two years after Brexit, a US-UK free-trade agreement seems elusive as negotiations stall.
“The main reason it’s not happening is because the US doesn’t want trade deals at the moment,” said trade expert David Henig, of the European Centre for International Political Economy.
“Since 2016, Washington has been anti-global trade because it believes it to be bad for its domestic manufacturing. That view hasn’t really changed with the (Joe) Biden administration.”
Economist Peter Holmes, an author of a study on UK-US trade by the UK Trade Policy Observatory, said: “The Biden administration is much less interested in trade than Trump was – but it also shares a lot of views with Trump and sees industrial policy at home as the way to go”.
Trump was enthusiastic about the prospects of a UK-US trade deal, analysts say, because Brexit both fitted with his own style of right-wing populism and helped weaken an economic competitor, the EU.
