Tuesday 13 August 2019

Is a big US-UK trade deal really on the cards?

Donald Trump said it and now John Bolton, his national security adviser, has said it. If the UK goes for a no-deal Brexit, there will be a wonderful series of trade deals with the United States. Bolton, on a visit to London to see Boris Johnson who is still, amazingly, the British prime minister, said the UK would be in the front of the queue. I am assuming he chose this exression deliberately. Barack Obama had said exacty the opposite when he was president. He kindly suggested the UK would be at the back of the queue for any trade deal. Frankly, I'm no in 2016. In other words he thought he was doing David Cameron, then prime minister, a favour. Now Bolton is only saying the UK will get a trade deal with the US to do Boris a favour. For some reason that escapes me, the Trump administration thinks a no-deal Brexit is a terrific idea. Sorry, oh moustachioed one, that is such nonsense. Bolton should stick to foreign policy and security issues and leave economics to the people who passed maths at top grade at high school. A no-deal Brexit will have terrible short and medium-term financial consequences for the country, unless a massive US trade deal sweeps in to fill the huge gaps on day one. That is surely never going to happen. Trade deals take years to negotiate and even if on this occasion the Trump administration somehow managed to do it relatively quickly, I can't see Congress approving. There's the little problem of Northern Ireland and the Good Friday peace agreement. If no-deal Brexit brings border checks back again in Ireland, that could undermine the fundamental tenets of the agreement that ended the 30-year terrorist war in 1988. Terrorism could return because the new version of the IRA, the so-called Real IRA, might start fighting for Irish unity all over again. They have a sort of de facto unified Ireland because of the open border bwteeen north and south under the EU system. Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic party will not approve any trade deal with the UK if the Good Friday agreement is put at risk. So, I think it's far too glib for Bolton and Trump to promise trade goodies with the UK once a no-deal Brexit has been launched. I can see them backing off under pressure from Congress. Then where will that leave poor old Boris?

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