TRADING BLOWS
JOHNSON’S HOPES OF U.S. FREE-TRADE PACT ARE SUNK AS BIDEN MAKES POINT ON PEACE PROCESS
BORIS JOHNSON has admitted to a major downgrading of his ambitions for postBrexit ties with the US after conceding Joe Biden will not negotiate a free-trade pact.
The possibility of such an agreement had been touted as one of the major prizes of Brexit. But after talks with the president in the White House, the prime minister said he is looking to make only ‘incremental steps’ to trading with the US.
Instead he highlighted news that a ban on British lamb imports would be lifted.
Speaking outside the US Capitol building in Washington, he said: ‘What we’re going to get from the US now is a lifting of the decades-old ban, totally unjustified, discriminating on British farmers and British lamb. It’s about time too.
‘And what we’re wanting to do is make solid, incremental steps in trade. The Biden administration is not doing free-trade deals around the world right now but I’ve got absolutely every confidence that a great deal is there to be done. And there are plenty of people in that building behind me who certainly want a deal.’
Ministers are now considering whether to join an existing pact between the US, Mexico and Canada, to boost transatlantic trade.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions in London, Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner told MPs: ‘Can I begin by offering my commiserations to the prime minister after he flew away to the US and made absolutely zero progress on the trade deal that he promised us.’
In a 90-minute meeting, the leaders also discussed climate change and preventing a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan.
And Mr Biden issued a fresh warning for the UK not to damage the peace process in Northern Ireland over the EU departure.
He said: ‘I would not at all like to see – nor, I might add, would many of my Republican colleagues like to see – a change in the Irish accords, the end result having a closed border in Ireland.’
Mr Johnson said: ‘On that point, Joe, we’re completely at one, nobody wants to see anything that interrupts or unbalances the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.’
The PM continued his US tour yesterday with meetings with lawmakers in the Capitol building.
As he met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he praised democracy as ‘vital’ to the world, adding: ‘I want you to know we stand by you, shoulder to shoulder with you, in sticking up for our beliefs in democracy.’
Ms Pelosi showed him a photo from Winston Churchill’s 1941 speech to Congress, which her father Thomas D’Alesandro saw.