The UK has been relegated from near the front of the queue for a US trade deal to a second- or third-order priority, according to reports.
Sources told the Guardian yesterday (29 April) that the US has chosen to divide its negotiations on trade and tariffs with other nations into three phases, with the UK pushed to the second or third of these.
One person with knowledge of discussions between the two countries said that “the government has been told it will not be in phase one – though that leaves the door open to be in either phase two or three”.
Tight timelines
Each group will get a week to negotiate with the US, the Guardian’s sources suggest, with a deadline of 8 July to come to a deal.
US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said that Asian nations including India, South Korea and Japan “have been the most forthcoming, in terms of doing the deals”. Bessent singled out European nations’ digital services tax on US firms as a particular bone of contention, despite UK offers to lower its own rate.
A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “We’ve been clear that a trade war is not in anyone’s interests, and we will continue to take a calm and steady approach to talks”.
EU deal concerns
The Telegraph, meanwhile, reports that the UK could struggle to sign a trade deal with the US as a direct result of strengthening trade ties with the EU – something it looks increasingly likely to do.
Alignment on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards as part of a veterinary deal with the EU could spark concerns for the White House, which has asked for an easing of food standards as part of any agreement with the UK.
A US Department of Agriculture-approved report states that such an agreement “to ease post-Brexit trading frictions, depending on the type of deal agreed, may impact the UK’s ability to negotiate future free trade agreements”. It continues:
“Entering into a so-called ‘Switzerland-style’ agreement would require the UK to align with almost all the EU’s food safety rules and then dynamically replicate all future regulatory changes made by the block, thereby constraining the UK’s flexibility in negotiating the agricultural chapters of other FTAs.”
China
The UK has been taking a range of moves aimed at mollifying the US president Donald Trump’s administration, not least on China, where new restrictions on government imports of Chinese solar panels sparked a response from the Chinese embassy in London.
The embassy accused individual UK politicians of “trying every means to slander and smear China”. A spokesperson added that “any attempts to politicise economic and trade issues and to disrupt normal China-UK trade will harm oneself as well as others”.
The UK also announced that it would reviewing its ‘de minimis’ rules on low value imports shortly after the US made a similar decision. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, warned the UK of the “trade tricks [which] are the dirty secrets behind Shein’s success”.
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