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Trump is wrong on Boris WA making a US-UK deal difficult.
by SHANKER SINGHAM (leading trade expert and negotiator)
telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/…

In an exchange with Farage, Trump said two things of note. First: the US is not after the NHS in a trade deal. Not once in all my years as a US trade policy adviser did I ever hear that the NHS was a US negotiating objective. It wasn’t and it won’t be.

US pharmaceutical companies do supply drugs to the NHS, and they are interested in fair and transparent government procurement, as they are all over the world, but this is also in the interests of UK patients and taxpayers. Where do people think the NHS gets its drugs from?

Second: Trump suggested that the Boris WA would make a trade deal with the US more difficult (having made similar comments on the May WA). He may have been right about May WA, but he is entirely wrong about Boris WA.

Under May WA the backstop would have put the whole UK in a customs union with the EU, and the negotiations would build on that single customs territory. Losing the ability to set our own regulations would make a US trade negotiation all but impossible.

Boris WA instead would leave all of the UK in a single customs union, with no customs union with the EU. By ensuring that GB is completely free of the EU CU, Boris has ensured that any trading partner can negotiate with the UK for untrammelled access to the whole GB market.

Potential trading partners made clear to me that the deal's arrangements for NI would have no impact on their desire to negotiate with us, since access to the UK market is not diminished by the special rules that apply only to NI.

Boris WA would also give us control over our own tariff schedules – essential to do a deal with the US and anyone else.

May Political Declaration (PD) was fatally unclear on the end state. The Chequers approach was basically a partial customs union with the EU in goods, and a free trade agreement in services. The rules of goods trade would closely mirror the EU rules of the single market.

Boris PD is massively different: it seeks trade as frictionless as possible but not frictionless trade with the EU; it specifically makes the FTA the end state. That clarity means the UK can immediately get on with negotiating trade deals with the EU and the rest of the world.

Being the overall architecture of Boris WA and PD an FTA end state, foreseeing regulatory divergence from the EU, we have the 2nd critical tool of an independent trade policy: control over our own regulatory system. What we choose to do is up to us.

Most important is to stop needlessly dividing our trade policy into the categories of "EU" and "Rest of the World" and have a single integrated policy where our negotiators can easily read across from one negotiation to the others.

Some would argue the transition period makes it difficult to negotiate with others. This is not true. Trade negotiations take time, and as long as it is clear that the UK will leave on a certain date, most negotiators from other countries will be happy to negotiate on this basis.

What they need is to know we won’t take the lily-livered approach the previous administration did, collapsing to EU demands before their proposals had even hit the table. So far, Boris has demonstrated that his negotiating style is very different from the past.

He has removed the level playing field obligations (which would have been problematic) and pushed them into chapters of the ultimate FTA where they belong. The US is used to negotiating such provisions: their own negotiating mandate requires labour and environmental standards.

Best way for Trump to test whether a trade deal is possible is to put a draft on the table and let negotiations start. Best way for the UK to do trade deals with US and EU, as many countries have done, is to put the EU FTA on the table for them now and start negotiating it.

The difference between May WA and Boris WA for our US relationship is huge. But if the PM has a weak negotiating hand (by not having a workable majority) or if he chooses himself to negotiate the EU first, then he might well make a trade deal with the US difficult.

But where the May WA precluded a US deal, what the PM has so far negotiated opens up the path for it.