The President of the United States, 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 reach a trade deal before 2023, in a blow to Britain’s hopes of a quick Brexit victory, according to people familiar with the matter.
President Joe Biden’s administration is focusing on other priorities, such as China and investment in national programs to boost the U.S. economy, and its legal power to speed up a trade deal through Congress will have to expire. July 1st.
According to someone familiar with the talks between the UK and the US, this power is unlikely to be renewed before, at least before 2023, as the mid-term elections of 2022 will make trade legislation politically too much. sensitive to approve it.
In London, the government has spoken optimistically in public about the prospects for a US deal, but officials downplay the chances of imminent progress.
The UK talks about the US trade deal, despite the omission of calls to the White House
“The UK has always been clear that reaching a mutually beneficial and comprehensive agreement is more important than reaching an agreement on any set date,” said a spokesman for the UK government’s Department of International Trade. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office declined to comment.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke with Biden on Friday, but the official British reading of the call made no mention of trade negotiations.
The slowdown will be disappointing for Johnson and his allies who had wanted to push for a quick deal as the first sign of the UK’s success as a world trading nation, recently freed from the limitations of membership in the European Union.
Politically, the long wait for a deal also runs the risk of adding the impression that Biden maintains his distance from Johnson’s Britain, in contrast to Donald Trump, who publicly defended the quick trade talks and was a supporter. Brexit enthusiast.
Irish history
Biden has been critical of the UK’s handling of its withdrawal from the EU and is willing to talk about its Irish ancestry. This was made clear again on Thursday, when the president referred to his great-grandfather fleeing Ireland on a so-called coffin ship “because of what the British had been doing”.
Although Britain’s Secretary of International Trade Liz Truss has said that most of a trade text has been agreed with the United States, the most controversial elements of an agreement, such as access to agricultural products Americans, like the chlorinated washed chicken or the hormone-treated veal, are: still to be negotiated.
Truss and new U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai held their first talks this week, a high-level call that focused on issues such as the coronavirus pandemic, World Trade Organization reform and the settlement of ‘a long dispute over illegal aid to Airbus SE and Boeing Co.
A spokesman for the UK Department of International Trade said Truss and Tai would hold “further discussions on trade agreement negotiations” after Tai has considered the progress of talks so far.
In written responses to senators during his confirmation process in February, Tai said the administration planned to review the status of talks ended under Trump and chart a way forward consistent with Biden’s policy of prioritizing workers’ interests. Americans, without giving time. line for this process.
At two years old
“I’m having trouble seeing how the Biden administration makes it work in the next two years,” said Simon Lester, associate director of the Washington-based Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. “I don’t know why they would want to present 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 other priorities. “It doesn’t feel like anything is about to happen,” he said. “This is the year you really want to fix Airbus-Boeing, especially if you’re going after China.”
Permanent resolution of the current quarterly rate The U.S. suspension of the Airbus-Boeing dispute, which covers trade worth about 550 million pounds ($ 755 million) with Britain and affects products such as whiskey and curd, is a priority for Tai and Truss, according to two people familiar with their discussions. Progress on this issue is likely to come long before any progress on a wider free trade agreement between the UK and the United States, people said.
When the momentum returns to trade talks, the UK expects the new US administration not to do so uncheck the chapters already agreed in its five rounds of negotiations, which began in May 2020.
The British government also believes it will be able to go beyond what was possible under the Trump administration in the agreement on priority areas such as climate change, data and access to digital services, one of the people said.