Methinks Alan Beattie doth protest too much in suggesting that the UK’s trade deal with the US will make a material difference to the risks to the global trading system (“Starmer’s deal with Trump may not be good news for the world”, Instant Insight, May 10).
The risks to that system arise from what the US is doing (and has been doing over the past 10 years, even if it just got worse), plus the behaviour of various other actors such as China and countries that have frustrated international multilateral agreements on spurious grounds such as India.
Of course no one is perfect — unilateral measures by the EU, and a partial trade agreement concluded in Donald Trump’s first term between the US and Japan are other examples of questionable practice. But everyone understands that the present turmoil is driven by the US, not the UK. As for speedy deals, the EU offered a zero for zero tariff deal within days of Trump’s initial tariffs.
If the full agreement envisaged in the UK-US “heads of terms” came into effect — admittedly a big if, but we got quite some way along those lines in Trump’s first term — it would not only be a coup for the multilateral trading system, it would also be a major advance on the Biden presidency in engaging the US.
John Alty
Director-general for Trade Policy,
UK Department for International Trade, 2016-2021, London E9, UK
