With a lot of focus on the other side of the Atlantic in the run up to next week’s US Presidential Election , Tiffany Burrows writes about what a Democratic victory could mean for the prospects of a UK-USA free trade agreement. To hear more about the Presidential Election, listen to a special episode of Newington’s podcast First Past the Pod, available on SoundCloud and Spotify.
The UK and US negotiating teams are meeting again this week, with the fifth round of talks due to conclude on Friday, in time for polling day. Americans are already going to the polls to vote for their next President and a host of other elected positions. The polls are indicating a victory for the Democrats for the Presidency, with former Vice President Joe Biden currently leading President Trump by around nine points nationally.
So what would a change of occupant in the White House mean for the UK-US FTA negotiations?
Back of the queue?
Joe Biden was Vice President when President Obama made his infamous “back of the queue” comments in 2016 and it is no secret that the former VP shared his boss’ view of Brexit; after the vote, Biden made clear that the US administration “preferred a different outcome.” As such, the UK Government can expect a more reserved reception than his pro-Brexit predecessor, Donald Trump. Like Obama before him, it would come as no surprise if the Biden administration focussed on the EU, prioritising an EU trade deal over one with the UK. . This approach is likely to be accelerated if the UK and the EU fail to secure their own FTA before the end of the transition period as the UK’s historic role as America’s bridge to Europe (and therefore the EU) will have taken two significant hits in quick succession.
Northern Ireland Protocol
While no explicit position on a UK-US FTA has been voiced by the campaign, Joe Biden wasted no time in joining the many voices on Capitol Hill warning the UK Government about overstepping the line and undermining the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) when it introduced the Internal Market Bill to Parliament (read Fraser Raleigh’s piece about the Bill here). In September, Biden tweeted: “We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”
The Special Relationship
Biden’s view on Brexit by no means suggests that he would abandon work to secure a trade deal with the UK.
Under a Biden presidency, however, a deal might not be fast-tracked in the way some had hoped would happen under Trump. For a start, Biden is expected to replace the current US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and a change in personnel would certainly delay progress at least in the short term . Negotiations would also depend politically on the personal relationship that would need to be forged between Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, which will also take time, particularly given that the pair will not be starting from a position of mutual respect; in the wake of December’s General Election Biden referred to Johnson as a “kind of a physical and emotional clone of the president [Trump]”.
It is this attitude that has some in the Conservative Party worried about what a Biden administration would mean for UK trade. Former Chancellor Sajid Javid has dismissed those concerns and argued that “for all his talk of a US-UK trade deal, Trump has shown that he’s an unashamed protectionist”, citing Trump’s tariffs on Scotch whisky, pulling out of talks with members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and taking on the WTO. In Javid’s words: “given our new mission as global champions of free trade, Biden doesn’t seem so hostile by comparison.”
In any case, the first months of a Biden administration’s foreign policy will likely be more geared towards reversing many of the Trump era decisions such as pulling the US out of the Iran Nuclear Deal and the Paris Climate Agreements, as well as resetting relationships after four years in which Western allies have questioned the US commitment to NATO and other key multilateral organisations.
While an FTA with the UK may not be high on a President Biden’s list of priorities, however, it will nevertheless still be on the list and, given the need for the US and UK to work closely on the international stage, the incentives to continue progress towards a deal will still remain for both sides.
And, of course, he still needs to win that election next Tuesday.
Photo by Gage Skidmore (Licence)
