Open for visits, not for trade
Biden ends travel ban, but still shuns UK trade deal. Matthew Partridge reports
After “months of relentless lobbying” from the UK and the EU, the White House has agreed to end a “sweeping travel ban” first imposed in March 2020, says Henry Zeffman in The Times. At the moment, almost all Europeans are banned from the US: “only American citizens, their families, and permanent residents can enter if they have been in the UK or the EU at any point in the previous two weeks”. However, Joe Biden has announced that “people who have had two doses of a coronavirus vaccine will be able to enter the US from the UK and the EU” from November.
The announcement still leaves some aspects to be determined, including the status of children, and whether AstraZeneca jabs, which have formed the “cornerstone” of the UK’s programme, will be recognised, says Poppie Platt in The Daily Telegraph. The US Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for use in the United States. However, Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical advisor, has strongly hinted that – while the final decision will be left up to the US Centres for Disease Control & Prevention – he thinks that “there would not be a problem” in recognising the vaccine for visitors.
US trade deal is a diplomatic dead duck
While UK citizens may soon be able to visit the US again, it seems that hopes of a post-Brexit trade deal with the US “have all but evaporated” after a meeting between Biden and Boris Johnson on Tuesday , says Heather Stewart in The Guardian. Johnson once touted a bilateral free trade agreement with the US as “a key Brexit win, highlighting the prospects for British exporters unfettered from the EU”, but the government now accepts that it sees “little prospect of progress towards a one-to-one deal” before the next general election in 2024 as the Biden administration “focuses on other priorities”.
It’s true that Biden was hardly enthusiastic about a US-UK trade deal, but it was hardly the “snub” that some of the government’s critics imply, says Freddy Gray in The Spectator. Compared to his previous statements, his overall tone “sounded more well-disposed towards Brexit Britain than he has before”. Still, the “boring truth” is that a bilateral trade deal has been a “diplomatic dead duck” for a while. So “ambitious Brexiteers” now see more potential in joining the USMCA, the new trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada.
The price of entry would be too high
Yet most trade experts believe that trying to join the USMCA will be just as difficult as a bilateral deal, says the Financial Times. Even if the UK could manage it, the “price of entry” may not be worth paying. Any accession process would leave the US, Mexico and Canada with the “whip hand, free to name their price for joining what is essentially a regional trade pact”. Besides, the benefits are unlikely to be that great, since USMCA “has limited coverage of many of the UK’s competitive advantage in exports, notably services, and would subject many British companies to two competing sets of regulations”.