The United Kingdom and the United States have signed a Mutual Recognition Agreement to ensure British-American trade continues seamlessly after Brexit, undercutting EU loyalists who claimed it would be damaged.
The United Kingdom trades with the United States, its largest single trade partner and number one source of inward investment, largely on World Trade Organization (WTO) terms — a so-called “No Deal” situation — as the European Union has failed to strike a bilateral agreement.
This WTO-based relationship is supplemented by a number of mini-agreements on things like regulatory standards, however, which Remainers had hitherto used to claim Brexit would deal a blow to British-American commerce.
However, the signing of a Mutual Recognition Agreement on Conformity Assessment (MRA) in Washington D.C. by the British ambassador to the United States, Sir Kim Darroch, and Deputy United States Trade Representative C.J. Mahoney on February 14th ensures this will not be the case.
Good news! Two new agreements have been signed to ensure continuity for 🇺🇸 businesses and consumers post #Brexit. U.S. exports to UK of products covered by these agreements worth > $5b — we’re determined that U.S.-UK trade will continue to flourish! https://t.co/3yz8jlFs6J
— Ambassador Johnson (@USAmbUK) February 15, 2019
“The UK and the U.S. are the strongest of trading partners and this agreement will allow British and American businesses to keep trading as freely as they do today, without additional bureaucracy,” noted Dr Liam Fox, Britain’s Brexit-supporting Secretary of State for International Trade.
“Our top priority is ensuring continuity for businesses as we leave the European Union and we are signing other agreements in the days and weeks ahead. We look forward to sitting down at the negotiating table with the Americans after we leave the European Union to strike an ambitious new free trade agreement,” he added.
“[W]e’re determined that U.S.-UK trade will continue to flourish,” added Woody Johnson, U.S. ambassador to the Court of St James’s, having previously penned a Valentine’s Day poem to the United Kingdom reading:
Roses are Red
But they soon fade away
For romance that lasts
Sign a new FTA!
While former U.S. President Barack Obama and his would-be successor both suggested Britain would be sent to “the back of the queue” for a trade deal if it left the European Union — allegedly at the behest of former prime minister David Cameron — current U.S. President Donald Trump is keen to put the mother country at “the front of the line” and strike a “powerful” new deal as soon as possible.
The future partnership with the EU which the Remainer-dominated British political establishment appears to be pursuing may make this impossible, however, as it would see the EU retain effective control over British trade policy through the imposition of various onerous obligations with respect to customs and maintaining a “level playing field” economically.
Trump’s Ambassador: Britain First in Line for ‘Ambitious’ Trade Deal… If You Manage to Leave the EU https://t.co/3qESgb5RIC
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 28, 2018
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