How is an American to view the British referendum decision to leave the European Union? Ideally, with distance, respect, and an eye toward the opportunities that Brexit could create for the United States.
Despite the immediate jitters in markets reacting to a result they had heavily bet against, Britons’ decision will likely have no long-term impact on most Americans.
One immensely gratifying aspect to Brexit on this side of the Atlantic is its repudiation of President Obama’s arrogant and menacing interference in a foreign election. In April, appearing alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron, Obama resoundingly endorsed a “Remain” vote, going so far as to threaten that “the U.K. is going to be in the back of the queue” for trade agreements if it leaves the European Union.
Perhaps Obama was just playing the “ugly American” as a favor to Cameron, who had invested all of his political capital in a victory for “Remain.” But ultimately, this threat from a president who already had one foot out the door of the White House failed to scare or sway enough Britons. Or perhaps it even backfired, as did much of the scaremongering that characterized the Remain campaign. Which is as it should be.
Now that the question of Brexit is decided, Obama is free to renounce his silly threat and start behaving like an adult again. Britain has not been America’s enemy for about 200 years, and it is far too important an ally and trading partner to be treated like an enemy or a second-class citizen today, just because its voters made the “wrong” decision from Obama’s perspective.
“One thing that will not change,” Obama acknowledged in a speech Friday, “is the special relationship that exists between our two nations. That will endure.”
But there’s actually a great potential for much more than mere endurance. Given Britain’s status as an advanced industrial nation with which the U.S. shares a language and culture, it is an ideal trading partner that not even Donald Trump or the newly anti-trade Hillary Clinton could disparage. Britain is already the fifth largest destination for U.S. exports. Last year, Americans exported $56 billion in goods to the U.K., and imported $58 billion. The fact that such deals happen without force of government indicates that they work to the mutual benefit of people in both nations.
A forward-looking president would view Brexit not as a setback, but as an opportunity for the U.S. to expand commerce with the United Kingdom still further. And this will be much easier to do now, because trade deals with post-Brexit Britain will no longer be subject to the whims of Italian tomato farmers, Spanish vintners or other unrelated special interests with grudges and special markets to protect.
Indeed, one of the strongest arguments for Brexit within Britain relates directly to this fact. Daniel Hannan, the soon-to-be former member of the European Parliament who writes a weekly column for the Washington Examiner, has repeatedly pointed out that such petty intra-EU bickering has up to now prevented the U.K. from finalizing favorable trade deals even with its own fellow Commonwealth nations of Australia and Canada.
The EU, as the smartest Brexiters argued, was keeping Britain locked away from the rest of the world. Her impending liberation can be made to work to the rest of the world’s advantage, without even hurting American trade with the EU itself. From this side of the pond, no harm is done, and perhaps some good can be derived, if American leaders will only stop pouting and start negotiating.
