May's Brexit deal sounds like a 'great deal for the EU',
says Donald Trump
US president’s intervention is likely to weaken May’s hand
when she is seeking to get deal approved by parliament
Julian Borger in Washington, Daniel Boffey in Brussels and
Dan Sabbagh
Tue 27 Nov 2018 07.29 GMT First published on Mon 26 Nov 2018
21.32 GMT
Donald Trump has delivered a weighty blow to Theresa May’s
hopes of steering her Brexit deal through parliament, saying it sounded like a
“great deal for the EU” that would stop the UK trading with the US.
Trump was speaking to reporters outside the White House when
he was asked about the deal May struck with the EU’s other 27 heads of state
and government on Sunday.
“Sounds like a great deal for the EU,” the president said.
“I think we have to take a look at, seriously, whether or not the UK is allowed
to trade. Because, you know, right now, if you look at the deal, they may not
be able to trade with us … I don’t think that the prime minister meant that.
And, hopefully, she’ll be able to do something about that.”
Trump’s intervention caught Downing Street off-guard and is
likely to weaken May’s hand at a time when she is seeking to get the deal
approved by parliament, where she faces determined resistance from 89 Tory
backbenchers who argue the deal does not secure sufficient freedom of action
for the UK. A vote is due on 11 December after a five-day debate.
A No 10 spokesman argued that Trump’s take on Brexit was
wrong: “The political declaration we have agreed with the EU is very clear we
will have an independent trade policy so that the UK can sign trade deals with
countries around the world – including with the US.”
The spokesman pointed out that the US trade representative
had already begun a consultation on a future trade deal with the UK, again
suggesting Trump’s analysis was incorrect. “We have already been laying the
groundwork for an ambitious agreement with the US through our joint working
groups, which have met five times so far,” he said.
It was unclear what Trump meant by the UK being unable to
trade with the US, although some suggested he was referring to the fact that
the UK would not be able to strike trade deals with the US after the Brexit
deal is concluded because of its terms.
Under the deal the UK will not be able to pursue an
independent trade policy during the 21-month transition period after Brexit,
during which it will be in effect an EU member state without any representation
in the bloc’s decision-making institutions.
In the highly likely scenario that a EU-UK trade deal is not
close to ratification by July 2020, the EU and UK will jointly decide at this
so-called “rendezvous” point, whether to extend the transition period for up to
two years, again precluding such a deal with Washington.
Brussels and Downing Street could alternatively allow the
“backstop” solution for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland to come
into force in January 2021.
Such a scenario would see the whole of the UK staying in a
customs union with Brussels under which it would not be able to pursue any
trade deal covering goods – although the UK would be free to seek agreements in
the services sector.
Last year, the US was the second largest market for EU
exports of goods after China while British exports are worth around £100bn a
year, more than twice as much as to any other country.
May has repeatedly insisted that the UK would be able to
negotiate and conclude trade deals with countries around the world after
Brexit, and she and other ministers had made no secret of the fact they hoped
in particular to reach an agreement with the US – the world’s largest economy.
Trump has, however, been seeking a trade deal with the EU,
and has been threatening tariffs on the European car industry in order to
attain such a prize. The UK would likely be covered by such an EU-US deal.
Brussels has a policy of pushing its new trade deal partners to allow countries
such as Turkey, with whom the bloc is in a customs union, to enjoy similar
beneficial terms to its member states.
Trump has had an uneasy relationship with May, and made no
secret of his support for Nigel Farage and the British hard right. He feted
Farage on the campaign trail and cast himself in the same radical outsider
role, tweeting in August 2016: “They will soon be calling me MR BREXIT!”
After Downing Street criticised the president for retweeting
three videos posted by a UK far-right group in November 2017, Trump retorted:
“@Theresa_May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic
Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just
fine!”
Special relationship? Theresa May discovers she has no
friend in Donald Trump
Julian Borger
The US president’s Twitter attack on Britain’s prime
minister leaves her with a toxic diplomatic dilemma – how to respond to a
contemptuous US president
Thu 30 Nov 2017 12.04 GMT First published on Thu 30 Nov 2017
05.16 GMT
Donald Trump and Theresa May at the G20 meeting in Hamburg,
Germany, in July. Their relationship as taken a blow with the president’s
tweeting habits. Photograph: Reuters
It was some poor official’s job this morning to tell Theresa
May that while she slept, the relationship with the US became special for all
the wrong reasons.
It is at least historic. No US president in modern times has
addressed a UK prime minister with the open peevishness and contempt of Donald
Trump’s tweet telling May to mind her own business.
George W Bush’s offhand “Yo Blair”, caught on an open mic in
2006, did not show much respect either, but at least it was meant to be friendly.
We are a very long way away from such halcyon partnerships as
Churchill-Roosevelt and Reagan-Thatcher.
Trump could not even be bothered to get May’s Twitter handle
right. The diss had to be corrected.
There are many layers of humiliation here for May to get her
head around over breakfast. Not only is it personally demeaning, it is also
politically toxic.
The prospect of a successful or at least survivable Brexit
is posited on a strong relationship with Washington. In that regard, May’s
successful rush to Washington in January to become the first foreign leader
received at the Trump White House was presented as a coup.
Under EU rules, the two countries are not allowed even to
start negotiating a trade deal until the UK is truly out of Europe, but the
warm words and the pictures of the Trump and May holding hands at least struck
an encouraging tone. The prime minister got to Washington in time to help the
state department and Congress stop the president lifting sanctions on Russia,
and squeezed out of him his first grudging words of support for Nato.
It has been downhill since then.
May had to tell the president off in September for
speculating about a terrorist attack in London. On Wednesday she had little
choice but to rebuke him for retweeting Islamophobic videos put out by the UK
far right, and that earned her the acid riposte from the thin-skinned president
on Wednesday night.
So what can May do to limit the damage? She can be stern or
she can try to laugh it off. But whichever mode she adopts, she will have to
distance herself from Trump in the short term while sending reassuring noises that
all will be fine in the long term.
All the signs suggest however, that it will not be fine.
May is in open disagreement with Trump over a major foreign
policy issue, the nuclear deal with Iran, which the president would like to
destroy and which the UK is anxious to salvage. To that end, May’s strongest
card is European solidarity. Top diplomats from the UK, Germany and France are
in Washington this week to do a triple act in defence of the agreement.
The Europeans are also desperate to steer the Trump
administration from the path to war with North Korea, that is being paved with
the help of Trump’s sound-bite bellicosity.
The irony is that it is just such European unity of purpose
that May is committed to undermine. Having a US president who is so erratic and
extreme that he makes disagreements with EU seem petty by comparison is a bad
look for a prime minister championing Brexit.
As for Trump, there is no convincing evidence he cares much
about the UK relationship anyway. He is more drawn to autocracies such as Saudi
Arabia and China. Having a Scottish-born mother has not made him sufficiently
sentimental that he would grant the UK a speedy and favourable trade deal after
Brexit. He has built his whole political persona on being unyielding in such
negotiations.
As the special counsel investigation into collusion with
Moscow advances into the White House, and as one after another of the
administration’s legislative initiatives fall flat, Trump is withdrawing
further and further into his base, which is resentful of the liberal world
order and indifferent to old European ties.
If it were not already clear, the latest presidential tweet
leaves little doubt. Theresa May does not a have partner, or even a friend, in
the White House
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