What Truss’s US trade deal U-turn is really about

Farewell to the UK/US trade deal. That’s the news from Liz Truss’s trip to the UN assembly in New York. The Prime Minister has told hacks on the flight over that the UK will not strike an agreement with America for many years. The former international trade secretary suggested that talks were unlikely to even start in the medium term: ‘There isn’t currently any negotiation taking place with the US and I don’t have an expectation that those are going to start in the short to medium term.’ The comments come ahead of her first proper meeting with Joe Biden since becoming Prime Minister.

Her comments have caused quite a stir back home. A trade deal with the US has long been viewed by Tory Brexiteers as something to strive for. What’s more, Truss is known to have been one of the most passionate advocates of such a deal. When she was International Trade Secretary it led to clashes with Downing Street. Truss wanted to push for an agreement as soon as possible but Boris Johnson’s aides believed any talk of one was politically toxic ahead of the 2019 election. They believed that just the mention of one would allow Labour to spend the election warning about chlorinated chicken. Still, Truss pressed on – when she visited Washington in the summer of 2020 to meet with her American counterpart Robert Lighthizer, she raised the issue in their meeting.

Most popular

David Butterfield

Decline and fall: how university education became infantilised

It also led to cabinet tensions. As I reported at the time, a divide formed in cabinet between the ‘Waitrose protectionists’ and the ‘Lidl free marketeers’. ‘We’re in real danger of a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do a trade agreement with the United States being hijacked by a bunch of Waitrose protectionists,’ a senior Tory supportive of Truss told me at the time.