Ministers defend Brexit deal after Trump attack

MINISTERS were forced to defend Boris Johnson’s deal with the EU last night after it was savaged by Donald Trump.

The US President said on Thursday night that his country ‘can’t make a trade deal with the UK’ under the Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement.

But Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said the PM’s plan was a ‘good deal’ that allowed Britain to ‘strike free trade deals around the world’.

Mr Trump made his bombshell comments to Brexit Party chief Nigel Farage in a radio interview. During the call, he broke with convention to criticise opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn and urge Mr Johnson to enter into an election pact with Mr Farage.

But it was his criticism of the trade deal which sparked the biggest controversy.

In August, Mr Trump promised a ‘very big trade deal’ with the UK and predicted that leaving the EU would be like losing ‘an anchor round the ankle’.

But speaking to Mr Farage, Mr Trump criticised the deal Mr Johnson recently reached with EU leaders.

The President said: ‘We want to do trade with UK and they want to do trade with us. To be honest with you... this deal... under certain aspects of the deal... you can’t do it, you can’t trade.

‘We can’t make a trade deal with the UK because I think we can do many times the numbers that we’re doing right now and certainly much bigger numbers than you are doing under the European Union.’

Mr Trump, who has previously expressed his backing for Brexit, did not elaborate on what difficulties he thought might arise in striking a USUK trade deal.

Post-Brexit trade with the US is prized by Eurosceptics as a major

‘We know this is a good deal’ Trump’s advice to Farage: Do a deal with Boris

From yesterday’s Mail

benefit of leaving the EU, despite concerns in some quarters that the UK would be forced to water down food standards to secure a deal.

Defending the deal on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Mr Jenrick said: ‘We think that the new deal the Prime Minister has negotiated, which is a good deal, enables the whole of the UK to leave the EU customs union and that means that we can now strike our own free trade deals around the world.’

Asked if the President was wrong, he said: ‘We know that this is a deal which enables us to secure good deals with a range of growing economies around the world, including the US, and we will be setting out to do that.’

Mr Jenrick said initial conversations with the US about a trade deal had been ‘positive’. A No 10 spokesman said the Prime Minister had not spoken to Mr Trump about his Brexit deal which was ‘agreed after they were last in touch’.

‘The PM’s deal takes back control of our money, laws and border and allows us to do trade deals with any country we choose – including the US,’ the spokesman added.

Former international trade secretary Liam Fox also questioned the President’s criticisms, saying: ‘I don’t know what they are, because we’re leaving the European Union customs union as a single country and that will enable us – under World Trade Organisation rules – to establish an independent trade policy, and be able to move forward.

‘Perhaps it’s the fact that when we have done trade agreements elsewhere, for example with Canada, in the EU, we made very clear that we are going to protect things like food standards, and our rights to regulate the health service now. We are not going to give those up.’