UK will go to the back of the queue for a trade deal with US if Biden wins
IN two days’ time, millions of Americans will go to the polls to decide whether they want four more years of Donald Trump or if Joe Biden should become their 46th President.
We know roughly what to expect from a second term of President Trump. But what if his Democrat rival is in the Oval Office?
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Joe Biden has made it plain he does not like Brexit. The day after the 2016 vote to Leave, Mr Biden was in Ireland. He told a crowd at Dublin Castle it was not how he would have voted.
And in October 2018, he said: “US interests are diminished with Great Britain not an integral part of Europe.”
Those are the words of someone who does not understand how today’s Europe works.
A President Biden would focus on Berlin, Paris and Dublin before London.
In a tweet earlier this year, Mr Biden ruled out a trade agreement between the UK and US if the Good Friday Agreement is impinged through any return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
He forgets the REAL threat to the Irish border is the European Union’s threat to impose tariffs, in breach of earlier promises, and its old-fashioned insistence on physical checks at the border.
The EU has effectively assumed there should be customs posts between Northern Ireland and Britain. This can easily be avoided with the use of technology but the EU has refused to countenance that.
The Good Friday Agreement requires that future policies pay proper attention to the interests of all communities, not simply nationalists. Any separation between Northern Ireland and Britain is inevitably a risk to Unionists.
This risk is greater if the EU’s intransigence leads to a No Deal with tariffs.
Mr Biden was Vice-President when Barack Obama said Britain would be “at the back of the queue” for a trade deal. The UK is currently at the late stage of trade negotiations with the US. That would all be wasted.
The UK and the US have been great allies, standing side by side through the darkest times. That special relationship has endured through presidencies where the incumbent has not necessarily been an Anglophile.
What is more, that relationship has very often been disproportionately valuable to America. To continue those historic links, Mr Biden should quickly rethink his approach to the UK, post-Brexit.
Trade between our countries was valued at over £220billion in the last year alone and we have more than £700billion invested in each other’s economies. Every day, a million-plus Brits and a million-plus Americans work for companies from the other nation.
A trade deal between the UK and the US would build on those links and be of enormous benefit on both sides of the Atlantic.
It is not just our economies that are intrinsically linked.
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Our values and cultures have deep, longstanding connections. And we are decisive in acting on those values, unlike the EU.
Only this week we took action on sanctions against the dictatorship in Belarus while the EU dithered and did nothing. If Mr Biden gets elected and wants allies that actually do things, he might want to start to pay more attention to London.
He should remember the historic links between our countries and, if victorious on Tuesday, should quickly work to secure the phenomenal benefits that can be enjoyed with a comprehensive free-trade agreement.
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