Security, not trade, is key to new PM’s hopes of building rapport with Joe Biden
Early signs are that Liz Truss, the new UK prime minister, is going to rely on the strength of its security relationship with the US, rather than the chimera of new trade or economic links to forge personal links with Joe Biden.
Her frank admission that there is no medium term prospect of a trade deal with the US may be an acknowledgment of the obvious, unsurprising to everyone save some Brexit fantasists.
Biden – strongly backed by Congress for more than two years – has tried to coax the UK into accepting that the existing trade deal with the EU is broadly acceptable. He certainly believes Brexiters should not put wider political stability at risk in Northern Ireland, including the cherished Good Friday agreement, by pressing ahead with legislation piloted by Truss as foreign secretary that presages a unilateral tearing up of the Protocol – the UK’s deal with the EU on how to square Brexit with an open border between the Irish republic and Northern Ireland.
It was noticeable that on day two of the Truss premiership, the Biden White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre brought up the issue of the protocol at a White House briefing on her own volition, saying: “There’s no formal linkage on trade talks between the US and the UK and the Northern Ireland protocol, as we have said, but efforts to undo the Northern Ireland protocol would not create a conducive environment, and that’s basically where we are in the dialogue.”
The idea of a trade war between Europe and the UK, a possibility the former UK ambassador to Washington Sir Kim Darroch warned of on Monday, is anathema to the US and a cause of serious tension.
Darroch pointed out “there is a big US stake in the Good Friday agreement. They supported it. They helped bring the IRA on board. They really have an investment in this, and are happy with Northern Ireland protocol as it is, and they don’t think there should be a unilateral rewriting of it which would be against international law.”
Truss’s motives for admitting a deal is dead can be read two ways. On the one hand it liberates the UK’s negotiation hand with Brussels. The US offer of a trade deal if the UK cooperates with Brussels over the protocol no longer holds quite the same sway once the UK acknowledges the deal is not going to happen.
On other hand it could just be a cold dose of much-needed reality.
The UK has long been aware Biden has shown an aversion to free trade deals, fearing they will undermine his efforts to reassure blue-collar Democrats that he is on their side, and not a Clintonite advocate of globalisation at all costs.
Either way, Biden was never going to be a convert to Trussonomics. Few in the US Treasury will admire her decision to pledge tax cuts including for corporations, or her apparent unconcern that policies to boost growth might widen inequality or lead to a rise in interest rates.
That difference of approach was made clear on Tuesday when Biden publicly rejected the notion that tax cuts for the rich can benefit everyone, at the precise point Truss was explaining the virtues of such policies to travelling reporters.
“I am sick and tired of trickle-down economics,” he said in a tweet. “It has never worked.”
To compound the problem, his team are also unhappy at the cuts in the UK aid budget, worrying it makes it harder to win over the global south to back the war in Ukraine.
It is obviously in the battle to defeat Vladimir Putin that Truss believes a functioning – if not special – relationship can be formed.
She underscored her support for Ukraine by announcing a commitment to meet or exceed in 2023 the £2.3bn ($2.6bn) of military aid spent on Ukraine in 2022. The funding combined with the training of Ukrainian soldiers, and deep intelligence advice, is more important to Biden than any other commitment coming out of the UK.
Biden and Truss are from different generations and if Truss carries through her threat to be a disrupter in a disrupted world, Biden will hardly be enamoured.
Biden prizes transatlantic unity, not one-upmanship. The state department has found talk of Global Britain overblown.
Although he may share her antagonism to authoritarianism in Russia, and China, Biden is hardly going to warm to someone who tries to model themselves on Margaret Thatcher, but his officials insist that does not mean they cannot have a working relationship, so long as Truss does not play to a domestic gallery.
Truss also looks as if she senses that the head-down, no-deviation politics on display in the Conservative leadership election will not work on an international stage. Her first meeting with President Emmanuel Macron in New York showed a willingness to build rather than blow up bridges after her widely criticised questioning of whether France represented a friend or foe during her leadership campaign.
Ever since Biden came to office, the US has been quietly telling Downing Street that it would like to see Britain get on better with its European partners, and not seek rows that can spill over into how the west confronts Russia in Ukraine.
So US officials will be delighted by accounts of a relatively mature bilateral between Macron and Truss. The readout focused on cooperation over energy security, and ending the reliance on Russian energy.
“We must continue to demonstrate to Putin that his economic blackmail over energy and food supplies will not succeed,” Downing Street said. That tone will be music to Biden’s ears as he prepares to meet Truss on Wednesday – but he will want assurances it will be maintained.