International trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan will lay the groundwork for a broad approach to transatlantic trade and investment in her first official visit to New York and Washington DC this week.
Trevelyan will push a range of shared strategic priorities including WTO reforms, removing trade barriers and closer trade ties with individual US states.
The government announced new research today showing the US has been the UK’s largest single inward investment partner country for the last two decades, supporting almost 1.5 million jobs.
Closest ally
Trevelyan said: “We share a thriving trade partnership with the US, which is driving investment into all corners of the UK helping to level up our economy and create jobs and prosperity.”
She added: “We’ve already made strong progress; from getting British beef and lamb back on US plates, to lowering the cost of Scotch Whisky exports by addressing the long-running Airbus-Boeing issue. Now is the time to hit the ground running and get on with boosting ties with our closest ally.”
Trevelyan will meet senior investors in New York today before heading to Washington DC to meet US trade representative Katherine Tai and members of Congress to discuss deepening trade ties.
Trump tariffs
According to Bloomberg, Trevelyan will also meet US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo and press for the removal of Trump-era tariffs on British steel and aluminium.
The US has already signed off on a similar deal with the EU in October which ended €6.4bn tariffs which Trump introduced in 2018.
As well as aiming to extract concessions on the tariffs, Trevelyan and trade minister Penny Mordaunt will use the visit to try and secure state-by-state trade deals. Mordaunt will visit California, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Oklahoma.
The government has played down reports that the steel deal was being hampered with British threats to trigger Article 16 due to a lack of progress in the Northern Ireland protocol discussions.
Mordaunt said that the steel tariffs and Northern Ireland were “two entirely separate issues” and should not be conflated.
No deal
Prime minister Boris Johnson came away from a visit to the US in September empty-handed having hoped to press for a trade deal with US president Joe Biden, as repored in the IOE&IT Daily Update.
Biden has proved much less enthusiastic about a possible trade deal with the UK than his predecessor and UK focus has shifted to more piecemeal gains.
Exports of British lamb to the US are set to resume from next year after more than two decades of restrictions, the government has announced. It is estimated that this market will be worth £37m in the first five years of trade.