The UK is hoping to resume its free-trade negotiations with the Biden administration after the US midterm elections in November 2022, trade minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said.

Speaking this week during her trade-boosting trip to Israel, Trevelyan said: “We hope that maybe after the midterms, when the [the Americans] want to pick up and talk about those federal-level bits of an FTA, we stand ready to carry on those conversations.”

The UK had hoped a post-Brexit deal with its biggest single country trading partner would be an early success of being able to determine its own trade policy after leaving the EU.

However, US president Joe Biden has focused on the domestic agenda and side-lined trade talks with the UK.

Groundwork

In the meantime the UK is focusing on state-level negotiations, laying the regulatory groundwork for a future bilateral trade agreement, Trevelyan said in an interview in Jerusalem, reports Bloomberg.

According to US government figures, US goods and services trade with the UK was an estimated $273bn in 2019, while UK exports stateside were worth $125.6bn.

The UK was the US’ 7th largest goods trading partner with $132.3bn in two-way goods trade during 2019.

Goods exports to the UK were worth $63.2bn in 2019, but according to the US Census Bureau, this dropped to $51bn in 2021.

Partnership with US

As previously covered in the IOE&IT’s Daily Update, trade minister Penny Mordaunt has urged the US to work with the UK in reforming world trade by tackling the “market-distorting practices, such as harmful state subsidies”.

The US is also keen to do a deal on steel and aluminium tariffs which continue to hinder UK exports to the US.