LONDON — It will be “very difficult”for Downing Street to strike a trade deal with Donald Trump after Brexit, a former U.K. trade minister has warned.
Francis Maude, who served as both a Cabinet Office minister and then trade minister under David Cameron, said the U.S. has “tended to be a difficult counterpart” in trade negotiations and said Prime Minister Boris Johnson should not expect a “massive dividend” from the controversial president.
He made the comments after the U.S. president told Johnson he wants to agree a trade deal with the U.K. within a year of the October 31 Brexit date.
In an interview with POLITICO, Maude, who served as an MP almost continuously from 1983 to 2015 before being made Lord Maude of Horsham, said people get “over-excited” about the prospect of trade deals around the world.
“You have to not expect that any one of them is going to be immediately transformative,” he explained.
“The one people go on about is the U.S. That is very difficult to do because the U.S. has tended to be a difficult counterpart in trade negotiations. Congress has always tended to be rather more protectionist than most presidents.”
Maude noted that Congress was a tough negotiator on public procurement during talks on the doomed TTIP deal, and also said the U.K. already has a favourable trade balance with the U.S.
Following talks with Trump at the G7 summit in Biarritz this week, Johnson said: “They want to do [a trade deal] within a year, I’d love to do it within a year, but that’s a very fast timetable.”
The prime minister warned such an ambitious timetable “is going to be tight,” adding: “I don’t think people realize quite how protectionist sometimes the U.S. market can be.”
Asked what advice he would give to Johnson when dealing with Trump, Maude said: “Don’t expect this to yield a massive dividend.”
Maude had some words of support for the current government. He said concerns about a no-deal Brexit have been “very exaggerated” because the U.K. would still be able to allow goods to flow into the country — and sectoral deals with the EU could “ameliorate” any negative effects of a no-deal.
He added that British civil servants would be able to cope with a no-deal Brexit because it is “at its best when there is a real sense of crisis.”
“When there is a crisis Whitehall is capable of operating at very high levels of intensity,” he explained. “And I think what has happened since the new prime minister took office is that there is that sense of an imminent climactic moment [on] October 31.”
He also issued a thinly veiled swipe at former Chancellor Philip Hammond, saying the Treasury had been unwilling to approve spending to cushion the impact of Brexit, and had been taking a “business as usual” approach despite the impending Brexit deadline.