Trump: Our trade could QUADRUPLE (but you need a clean break with EU first!)

President sticks to his guns as he says he urged Prime Minister to be ‘brutal’ in Brexit talks with Brussels

A POST-Brexit deal could ‘quadruple’ trade between Britain and the US provided the UK makes a clean break with Brussels, Mr Trump told the Prime Minister yesterday.

At a joint news conference at Chequers, the president revealed he had apologised to Theresa May for an incendiary newspaper interview in which he attacked her Brexit strategy and questioned whether Britain was really leaving the EU.

He said the relationship between the two allies was now ‘the highest level of special’, adding: ‘Am I allowed to go higher than that?’

He lavished praise on Mrs May, describing her as an ‘incredible woman’ and adding: ‘She’s a very smart, very tough, very capable person and I would much rather have her as my friend than my enemy.’

Although he rowed back on comments made in an interview with The Sun, Mr Trump made it clear he still harboured reservations about Mrs May’s approach to Brexit.

He revealed she had rejected his advice to be ‘brutal’ with Brussels in negotiations and suggested any trade deal would be limited unless the UK made a clean break with the EU.

Mr Trump horrified Downing Street yesterday after warning that Mrs May’s new Brexit proposals would ‘kill’ hopes of a trade deal.

After a working lunch with the Prime Minister – and frantic work by aides – he backtracked slightly but still sounded sceptical.

‘The only thing I ask of Theresa is we make sure that we can trade and don’t have any restrictions,’ he said.

‘We want the UK to trade with us. We have a tremendous opportunity to double, triple or quadruple trade. If they’re going to go a certain route, I just said I hope they will be able to trade with the US.

‘I read reports where that won’t be possible, but I believe after speaking with the Prime Minister’s people and representatives and trade experts, it will absolutely be possible.’

Mr Trump, one of the few world leaders who backed Brexit, also appeared to question whether the UK would even leave the EU.

He said the US was ready to strike a trade deal ‘once the Brexit process is complete and perhaps the UK has left the EU’, adding: ‘I don’t know what they are going to do. Whatever you do is OK with me – that’s your decision. Just make sure you can trade with us.’

British exports to the US were worth almost £100billion in 2016, suggesting Mr Trump’s vision of a comprehensive free trade deal could prove a massive boost to the British economy.

Mrs May corrected the president and said there was no question about the UK’s departure from the EU.

‘I heard the turn of phrase that the president used earlier, but let me be very clear about this – we will be leaving the EU and we are leaving the EU on March 29, 2019,’ she added.

She insisted there was ‘no limit to the possibility of us doing trade deals around the world after we have left the EU’, despite warnings from her MPs about last week’s Chequers deal.

During a 50-minute news conference in the garden at Chequers yesterday:

Mr Trump repeated his belief that Boris Johnson would make a ‘great prime minister’, while Mrs May looked on awkwardly.

The two leaders briefly held hands as they navigated steps at the PM’s country retreat.

Mr Trump warned Mrs May not to abandon the Brexit talks, as some Eurosceptic MPs are urging, saying: ‘You can’t walk away because that means you’re stuck.’

Mrs May clashed with Mr Trump over immigration, saying it had been ‘good for the UK’, after he warned it ‘was changing the culture and is very negative for Europe’.

Mr Trump clashed with journalists, describing reports that he had criticised Mrs May as ‘fake news’.

Downing Street was left shellshocked by Mr Trump’s overnight attack on Mrs May’s Brexit tactics. The Prime Minister was told about the contents of the interview just before she met him and his wife Melania at Blenheim Palace on Wednesday night, having previously been assured by the White House that it was a ‘helpful’ intervention.

The president, who attacked the EU over trade policy, yesterday revealed he had advised Mrs May to be tougher with Brussels but declined to say exactly what he had in mind.

‘I gave her a suggestion and maybe she found it too brutal,’ he said. ‘I gave her a suggestion, not advice. I can fully understand why she thought it might be tough – if they don’t get the right deal, she may choose to do what I suggested.’ Observers have questioned whether the ‘special relationship’ will survive, but while Mrs May did not use the term, Mr Trump said: ‘I would give our relationship with the UK the highest level of special.’

Anthony Gardner, Barack Obama’s former EU ambassador, described Mr Trump as a ‘one-man wrecking machine’ and said his comments in The Sun were ‘unacceptable’.

But prominent Eurosceptic MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said it was ‘perfectly reasonable’ for Mr Trump to warn about the potential impact of the Government’s Brexit white paper.

‘Make sure you can trade with us’

SAY what you like about Donald Trump – and an awful lot of bile is poured on his head – he has a near genius for pointing out the emperor wears no clothes. Yes, the President has many faults. He is brash, vain and often undiplomatic. In his early-hours tweets, he can be boastful and boorish, while his ‘locker-room’ attitude to women verges on the Neanderthal.

But is he really the devil incarnate, as he’s depicted by the bleating sheep of the liberal Left?

For naked-emperor spotting, take this tumultuous week, when the ‘great disrupter’ charged like a bull in a china shop through a Nato summit in Brussels and on to Britain. Here he gave an incendiary interview to a red-top and told some home truths in an extraordinary press conference with Theresa May.

Anyone following the BBC’s sneering reports might think he was guilty of a massive diplomatic howler in Brussels, when he lambasted Germany for buying billions of euros worth of Russian gas while relying on the US for defence against Russian attack.

But look at it from US taxpayers’ point of view. Why should they go on picking up the lion’s share of Nato’s bills, while Germany – with its mighty economy – fails miserably to pay its share?

It’s the same with the Left’s attacks on Mr Trump’s trade war against China and his imposition of tariffs on some imports from the EU. Why should America tolerate the dumping of Chinese steel at below cost price – or the EU’s many barriers to US exports?

Indeed, for decades, the Brussels cartel has been conducting a trade war against the entire world – forcing EU citizens to pay well over the odds for food and goods, while hammering Third World farmers. You never hear the Left complaining about that.

Which brings us to Mr Trump’s supposed gaffes in Britain. True, a more discreet president might have held back from praising Boris Johnson (‘a very talented guy’, who would make a ‘great prime minister’) after he resigned in protest against Mrs May’s Brexit proposals. Nor was it tactful of him to attack London Mayor Sadiq Khan for doing a ‘very bad job’ of tackling terrorism and crime.

Most controversially of all – though he later rowed back unconvincingly – Mr Trump condemned the Brexit White Paper, saying it would probably kill off any Anglo-American trade deal.

Were these really gaffes? Or was the President, with his fresh businessman’s eyes, simply telling the blindingly obvious truth? It is a fact that Mr Johnson is very talented, while nobody can dispute that Mr Khan is doing a truly terrible job of fighting crime.

As for this week’s dismal White Paper, the world can see it represents a rotten deal for Britain and our hopes of striking trade pacts outside the EU.

Indeed, the deeper we delve into these 98 pages of impenetrable bureaucratese, drafted by defeatists in the Civil Service, the more evident it becomes that this compromise will leave the UK in the worst of all worlds, bound by EU rules but without any say.

Yesterday that pusillanimous Remainer, Chancellor Philip Hammond, even made clear that he’s willing to make Britain’s finance industry subject to EU regulations. As the world’s second largest exporter of financial services, why on Earth should we have to take orders from the pygmies of Brussels?

As for the charge that Mr Trump has no business commenting on our domestic affairs, this paper does not recall the BBC attacking Barack Obama for throwing his weight behind Remain.

Meanwhile, those who accuse him of rudeness should consider the abominable discourtesy of those – including Jeremy Corbyn, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Tony Blair’s liar-in-chief Alastair Campbell – who joined yesterday’s infantile protests against the President’s visit, keeping him away from London. Hasn’t it occurred to them they’d have no freedom to protest if America hadn’t rescued us from Nazism?

Yes, this paper has reservations about Mr Trump – though we wish our own politicians would speak up for British interests with half as much vigour as he does for America’s. But like the overwhelming majority in this courteous country, we welcome him wholeheartedly as the representative of our most powerful friend, in war and peace.