Well...hang on a minute
Topline: Downing Street has been forced to defend Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit plan after President Donald Trump suggested that the U.S. can’t do a trade deal with the U.K.—despite the opportunity being a key attraction point for pro-Brexit campaigners.
- Speaking to U.K. radio station LBC, Trump told his friend and Brexit party leader Nigel Farage that the U.S. “can’t make a trade deal with the U.K.” under “certain aspects” of Johnson’s trade deal.” But Number 10 hit back, saying Johnson’s Withdrawal Deal “ensures that we take back control of our laws, trade, borders and money.”
- Trump has previously expressed encouragement for Brexit and following the G7 summit in August suggested a “very big trade deal” could be struck with the U.K.
- On the same call Trump waded into Britain’s election telling Farage that Johnson is the “exact right guy for the times” and that Corbyn would take Britain “into such bad places.” Trump’s endorsement for Johnson was welcome news among opposition ranks, with Corbyn accusing Trump of interfering in the U.K. poll to help “his friend Boris Johnson.”
- The U.K. is set to have an early election on December 12 in a bid to break the Brexit stalemate that has seen British lawmakers unable—and in some cases unwilling— to ratify the divorce deal that Johnson made with the EU.
Crucial quote: Without specifying the precise challenges, Trump said: “We want to do trade with the U.K. and they want to do trade with us. To be honest with you ... this deal ... under certain aspects of the deal ... you can’t do it, you can’t do it. You can’t trade.
“We can’t make a trade deal with the U.K. because I think we can do many times the numbers that we’re doing right now and certainly much bigger numbers than you are doing under the European Union.”
Key background: During the Brexit campaign and after, Johnson campaigned on a platform that the U.K. was hamstrung by its trading ties with the European Union and a clean break with the bloc would allow the British government to strike favorable trade deals with the U.S. and other nations.
But in the years since the Brexit referendum, parties and campaigns opposed to Brexit have raised fears that food safety standards and the National Health Service would become bargaining chips in trade negotiations with the U.S. Yesterday, Trump denied claims that the U.S. government would weaponize the NHS in trade deal negotiations.
This isn’t the first time Britain’s hopes of a trade deal with the U.S. have been deflated—before the U.K. even voted to leave the bloc in 2016, former president Barack Obama warned, at the request of then-prime minister David Cameron that the U.K. would be at the “back of the queue” for a trade deal post-Brexit.
What is in Johnson’s deal? The British prime minister has been fighting to sell his deal to U.K. lawmakers after he renegotiated Theresa May’s unpopular Brexit deal. But he has now “paused” his efforts to get the deal signed off by British lawmakers following a series of setbacks.
Johnson’s deal is largely the same as former prime minister Theresa May’s, but it differs in that it removes the U.K. from the customs union with the EU, and carves out a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. to keep trade flowing across the Irish border.
Analysts and opposition lawmakers say Johnson’s deal is much worse than May’s because it creates looser trade links with the EU. A leading U.K. think tank, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, this week estimated that Johnson’s deal would cost the British economy £70 billion within ten years and shrink the economy by 3.5%.
