... and Labour won’t prioritise U.S. trade deal, shadow minister reveals

A TRADE deal with the US under Donald Trump would not be a priority for an incoming Labour government, a senior frontbencher has revealed.

Business spokesman Jonathan Reynolds said negotiating a ‘comprehensive’ free trade agreement would be ‘difficult’ as Labour had ‘no appetite’ to weaken food standards.

A deal could be back on the table if Mr Trump wins the presidential election later this year, as he was an enthusiastic supporter of a postBrexit trade agreement when he was last in the White House. But Labour will not be keen to reciprocate the interest unless certain standards are met, Mr Reynolds confirmed.

His comments came in stark contrast to

Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, who said she hopes to ‘pick up where we left off’ on a trade deal following the US election.

Mr Reynolds said: ‘The present position is the US is not seeking comprehensive free trade agreements. There are some well-known issues in terms of what the national interests are on either side that make a comprehensive deal difficult. There’s no appetite on our side, excuse the pun, for lower food standards.

‘Historically with the US, there’s been a lot of focus on that, and that would be an issue.’

Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, he added: ‘Some of the well-known tensions that we talked about food standards would be the same whoever’s in charge.’

Ms Badenoch seemed more chipper about the prospect of another Trump presidency. Asked by Sky News about the possibility of a trade deal, she said: ‘We had gone quite a long way in terms of negotiating a UK/US free trade agreement. So we hope whoever it is who wins the US election... will be somebody who looks again at what we have done and hopefully we pick up where we left off.’

Last week she told the business and trade committee that the biggest impact on reaching a deal ‘was the change in administration from president Trump to President Biden’.