Britain’s historic reorientation away from the European Union towards the rest of the world presents the United Kingdom with an historic opportunity, which will be the most challenging British diplomatic task for the half a century. It will require parallel sets of negotiations: an amicable separation from the EU retaining the best of our relationship, commercial and political, with the rest of Europe, and new negotiations to create free trade agreements with other world economies, including the United States.
The new prime minister, Theresa May, has created a ministerial team to deliver this, which balances her down to earth, “no frills” approach, managing risks and mastering the detail, with a foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, whose larger than life personality, boldness and quick wit will make him an impressive ambassador for the United Kingdom on the world stage. Boris will use his celebrity status to help forge Britain’s new place in the world, articulating the opportunities, and promoting our shared values of freedom and democracy.
Then there is the new international trade secretary, Liam Fox, who as a long-standing advocate of the centrality of the Atlantic Alliance to the United Kingdom, will surely want to secure a free trade agreement with the United States, the world’s largest economy and our largest export market worth $60 billion. Our countries also invest almost $1 trillion in each other’s economies, making us each other’s largest investors.
The U.S. is a notoriously tough negotiator, unafraid to use large armies of lawyers to argue for the best possible terms. Britain must now build its trade negotiation capacity from scratch, as it is currently outsourced to the European Commission which manages trade policy on behalf of all 28 member states.
A U.K.-U.S. trade negotiation will test both Britain and the United States. Despite having a competitive and dynamic domestic economy, to the outside world the U.S. is still remarkably protectionist. Members of Congress are susceptible to one narrow interest or lobby group and if that group lobbies hard enough, they can limit the scope or even scupper deals to protect their sectional interest at the expense of the overriding wider national and international interest in free trade and competition.
I would hope that our Republican counterparts hold true to the values shared with British Conservatives of upholding competition and enterprise to widen the free markets required to deliver prosperity.
Across the aisle, I hope that Democrats see the upsides of deepening the United States’ trading ties with its most important and constant ally. It’s understandable that some Democrats might balk about signing up to free trade agreements with countries where the minimum wage is a dollar an hour, but Britain boasts a minimum wage rising to $13 by 2020.
Unencumbered of the inter-state compromises and special pleading involved in EU negotiations, which has made the EU-U.S. trade talks so difficult and slow, the United Kingdom will be able to move quickly to open trade talks with the United States and enhance our trade and commercial links to the mutual benefit of the American and British peoples.
A U.K.-U.S. bilateral negotiation would provide a different set of negotiating parameters to the existing EU-U.S. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, permitting, for example, more liberalization in the audio-visual services sector — a sector excluded from TTIP negotiations at the insistence of the French. Indeed, our shared Anglo-Saxon approach to smart regulation should reveal synergies, allowing us to tackle non-tariff barriers across a range of sectors in both manufacturing and services. Doubtless there will need to be compromises on both sides. For instance, British financial services companies will expect better access to the American market or American farmers will want lower tariffs and higher quotas on their produce sold to Britain. But Britain will have a freer hand to design its regulations and tariff schedules in a way that maximizes the trade and investment opportunities for businesses in both our countries.
Britain and America remain the closest of allies, founded on an old and deep friendship; with the prize of a trade deal possible, I now look forward to taking our bilateral relationship to a new level.
Crispin Blunt is a Conservative member of the UK Parliament and chairman of the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
