Trump and May agree to set up ‘ big’ free trade deal
THERESA May and Donald Trump last night pledged to sign a major post-Brexit trade deal.
The two leaders spoke for half an hour last night on the fringes of the United Nations general assembly meeting in New York.
Downing Street said they ‘agreed that Brexit provides a wonderful opportunity to strike a big and ambitious UKUS free trade agreement’.
Ahead of the talks, President Trump said: ‘We are talking about a lot of different things today – trade, military, security, protection all sorts of things. We have a myriad of things to talk about. It’s great to be with you and it’s great to have you as a friend.’
Mrs May replied: ‘The relationship between the US and UK is a really special one, deep and enduring, but there’s much for us to talk about as we go forward together, particularly obviously the ambitious and wide ranging trade deal that we want to do between the UK and US. But also our security partnership and defence partnership and those many challenges we are facing around the world and how we can cooperate.’
Asked why she would trust the President’s promises, she said he stood behind the UK on Nato and by expelling Russian diplomats after the Salisbury poisonings.
Addressing a business audience in New York earlier in the day, Mrs May suggested that Britain and the EU could still do a deal despite the acrimonious collapse of talks in Salzburg last week. She said there was much common ground.
She told the Bloomberg summit she understood there was uncertainty but added: ‘Just if I can say this again, we believe that we will and can get a good deal.
‘And that’s because it’s not just about the UK, it’s about the EU as well, and I think that continued trading relationship is going to be good for both sides.
‘But there are several weeks of intense work to be done in order to get to that point.’
President Trump’s visit to the UK this summer got off to a terrible start when he criticised Mrs May’s approach to Brexit and warned it could scupper a deal with the US. But afterwards he declared the relationship between the two countries to be at ‘the highest level of special’.
He also dangled the prospect of a post-Brexit trade deal that could ‘quadruple’ the UK’s £100billion annual trade with the US. The administration has made no secret of the fact it wants the UK to make a ‘clean break’ with the EU.
The PM’s Chequers plan would keep Britain tied to EU regulations on goods and food.
Her Eurosceptic critics, who want a looser relationship with the EU, say it will severely curtail, if not scupper, any US deal.
Mrs May was also asked by journalists how she coped with the pressure of her job.
She said: ‘Throughout my working career, whatever job I’m doing, whatever job I’m taking on, I take a very simple approach to it. You focus on where you want to get to and then work out how to get there and then just do that and put it into practice.’