US President Joe Biden
Photographer: Oliver Contreras / Sipa / Bloomberg
Photographer: Oliver Contreras / Sipa / Bloomberg
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The UK and US are unlikely to be ready to negotiate a trade deal before 2023, in one fell swoop to Britain’s hopes of a quick Brexit victory, according to people familiar with the matter.
President Joe Biden’s administration is focused on other priorities, such as China and investing in domestic programs to boost the US economy, and its legal power to accelerate a trade deal through Congress expires on July 1.
According to a person familiar with the UK-US talks, that power is unlikely to be renewed before at least 2023 – as the 2022 midterm elections will make trade laws too politically sensitive to pass.
In London, the government has publicly spoken optimistically about the prospects of a US deal, but officials are now downplaying the chances of imminent progress.
UK talks US trade deal despite omitting White House call
“The UK has always been clear that reaching a mutually beneficial and comprehensive deal is more important than reaching an agreement on a fixed date,” said a spokesman for the UK Department for International Trade. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office declined to comment.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke to Biden on Friday, but the official UK reading of the call made no mention of the trade talks.
The delay will be disappointing to Johnson and his allies who would have liked to push for a quick deal as an early sign of the UK’s success as a global trading nation, recently relieved of the restrictions of membership in the European Union.
Politically, the long wait for a deal also threatens to add to the impression that Biden is keeping his distance from Johnson’s Britain, unlike Donald Trump, who was publicly in favor of accelerated trade talks and an avid supporter of Brexit.
Irish History
Biden has criticized the way the UK is dealing with its withdrawal from the EU and is keen to denounce his Irish ancestry. That came back into focus on Thursday, when the president referred to his great-grandfather who had fled Ireland in a so-called coffin ship “because of what the British had done.”
While UK International Trade Secretary Liz Truss has said that most of a trade text has been agreed with the US, the most controversial elements of a deal – such as access for US agricultural products such as chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef – have yet to be negotiated.
Truss and new US Trade Representative Katherine Tai held their first talks this week, a high-level appeal that focused on issues such as the coronavirus pandemic, World Trade Organization reform and resolving a long-running dispute over illegal aid to Airbus SE and Boeing Co.
The UK Department for International Trade spokesman said Truss and Tai would have “further talks on trade deal negotiations” after Tai considered progress in the talks so far.
In written responses to senators during her February confirmation process, Tai said the administration intended to review the state of affairs that had been concluded under Trump and chart a path forward consistent with Biden’s policy of prioritizing the interests of American workers. without giving a time. line for that process.
Two years away
“I’m struggling to see how the Biden administration is doing this over the next two years,” said Simon Lester, the deputy director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. “I don’t know why they would want to discuss it with all the other things on their agenda.”
David Henig, director of the UK Trade Policy Project at the European Center for International Political Economy, agreed that the US now has different priorities. “There’s no point that anything is about to happen,” he said. “This is the year when you really want to fix Airbus-Boeing, especially if you’re going after China.”
Permanently fix the current four-month rate US suspension in the Airbus-Boeing dispute, which involves trade with Great Britain worth approximately 550 million pounds ($ 755 million) and products such as whiskey and clotted cream, is a priority for Tai and Truss , according to two people familiar with their discussions. Progress in this area is likely to happen well ahead of any breakthrough on a broader UK-US free trade agreement, the people said.
When momentum returns to the trade talks, the UK hopes the new US administration will not remove the chapters already agreed in their five rounds of negotiations, which started in May 2020.
The UK government also believes it can go further in the deal in priority areas such as climate change, data and access to digital services than was possible under the Trump administration, one said.