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It is worth noting that the UK Government has still not said what it wants from a US trade deal (not good enough to just say 'free trade', especially when we have a lot of that already) 
The unspoken reason a US trade deal is pushed so hard by so many in the Cabinet and around them is to push the UK away from EU regulations and towards US ones in areas like food. So this would be an anti-free-trade-with-EU deal. But that risks quite a lot of political controversy
Business, wary of the Atlanticist ideology, greater barriers to trade overall, and another controversial trade deal like TTIP, is not pushing for a comprehensive UK-US Free Trade Agreement, but rather for small deals easing some aspects of UK-US trade but not blocking UK-EU trade
Oddly therefore the idea of small UK-US sectoral deals is fine (they just can't tackle tariffs without breaking WTO rules), and let's get on with it. But the big story isn't this, it is whether the UK Government will actually move away from EU regulations in areas like food
