Thread by @faisalislam

Quite the leak this - the entire proceedings of the rather secretive UK-US Trade and Investment Working Group... body set up by May and Trump that started work in July 2017: 6 documents, hundreds of pages of official read outs, mostly not about Pharma

Going to read them - but first flick - there’s lots more than just pharma in here - implications for agriculture, “Geographical Indicators”... and eg here - US querying why the UK seeks to stay part of the (non-EU) Unified Patent Court - why would they do that?

Obvs Labour play them up, and Conservatives play down...

But essential pic - US negotiators in variety of areas questioning how close UK wants to be to existing frictionless EU trading zone...

Eg US “clearly highly concerned” re May’s Chequers implication for UK-US goods deal

There is an important trade off here.

PM’s offer is UK does not need to be as close to existing EU trade, ie not to pursue existing frictionless trade (demanded by eg car, aero industry) in order to pursue more extensive US trade deal (conceivably better for tech, maybe banks)

OK - some more stuff..

UK Digital Services (aka Google/Facebook) Tax, wasnt raised by US officials, but UK officials clearly expect it to be raised in “senior/political” negotiations.

It’s in current Conservative manifesto.

UK Big Tech hate it, privately suggest is dealbreaker

Here “Pathogen Reduction Treatment” = chlorinated chicken. US officials criticise EU’s “not appropriate” & “unscientific” approach ask where UK will diverge.

ALSO “significant concern” re EU anti-microbial restrictions, many of which were pushed by Con govt/ Jim O’ Neil...

***... so US and UK officials tried to coordinate their modelling of the benefits of a US-UK trade deal... “the main macroeconomic results were small”... BUT... hard Brexit (with UK-EU tariffs) better for the US, not for UK.. esp US dairy and meat exporters “larger expansion”...

The US officials really hated Chequers, because of the alignment between UK & EU (designed to maintain frictionless trade for manufacturers) particularly on agrifood standards “worst case scenario” - obviously now PM resigned over Chequers, & this alignment is now gone for GB.

* US big tech, I meant.

Hint here that even if Brexit had happened Oct 31st, US trade deal would have been difficult to complete “low chances” before Trump “first term” up...

“all to play for” if UK went for No Deal. “Non-starter” if UK went for Single Market/ CU...

Full Blog on trade documents after I read them all....

cant see "NHS on sale" but "on the table" at official levels were things that could affect drugs prices, "Pathogen Reduction" - ie chlorination, antimicrobial measures, intriguing economic models... bbc.co.uk/news/business-…

This is drug pricing discussion from 3rd Working Group documents Nov 2017 meeting I read out on Today where US trade negotiator says drugs pricing in other countries causes “angst” and that the US “not getting a good deal” in Pharma ... then features in USTR objectives this year

This is from US Congress’ fast track approval for US Trade negotiations generally... so shouldn’t be a surprise that this was discussed, or at least in these scoping discussions was “on the table”