One
of the mantras of the Brexiteers since the vote has been that we should
negotiate ‘free trade’ deals with lots of other countries rather than
restricting ourselves solely to those in the EU. And one of their great hopes has been that
there will be an early deal with the USA.
During his long and meandering ramble
last week, Trump had something interesting to say about his approach to trade
deals. In his own (inimitable) words, he
said this:
“Now look, fair trade. Not free, fair. If a country is taking advantage of us, not
going to let that happen anymore. Every
country takes advantage of us almost. I
may be able to find a couple that don’t.
But for the most part, that would be a very tough job for me to do.”
It’s
perfectly clear – well as clear as anything Trump says. Whilst the UK government think they’re going
to negotiate a free trade deal with the US, he is interested only in ‘fair’
trade. He didn’t actually define what
that means, but we can be sure that it isn’t what most of us mean when we think
of the ‘FairTrade’ campaign. I suspect
that he means trade which has a favourable, or at least neutral, balance for
the US. On that criterion, the UK’s
current trade surplus with the US amounts to “taking advantage” and his
objective will be to end that. I can
certainly see why that would be in the interest of the US, but why would anyone
think that it’s in the interest of the UK?
But then, I don’t think that the UK government
has ever been concerned about the detail; they just want a deal, any deal, to
show what ‘global Britain’ can achieve.
From that perspective, the existence of a deal with the US is more
important than its content, however harmful the latter may be.
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1 comment:
The United States has NEVER had any ‘trade deal’ with the UK, either prior or since jointing the EU. This is because the dominant economic power has no need to sign deals. It dictates them. The UK government are spinning phantoms.
Historically, the United States has only ever had one economic deal with the UK. It was an attempted trade embargo imposed by the British Empire, after the declaration of independence. Even at the beginning of WW2, it was a 'credit card' agreement called 'lend-lease'.
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