Trump Hints at Minideal With India While at UN, Touts UK FTA Potential
President Donald Trump, just before meeting with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York at the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, answered a reporter's question on whether a trade announcement is coming by saying: "Bob Lighthizer, who's right here, was negotiating with India and their very capable representatives. And I think very soon we'll have a trade deal. We'll have the larger deal down the road a little bit, but we will have a trade deal very soon."
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Trump also said he'd be talking trade just ahead of a meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson the same day. "We can quadruple our trade with U.K. And we can, I think, really do a big job. Bob Lighthizer is here -- our trade representative. Your trade representative is here. And they’re already scheduled today to continue negotiations," he said.
Johnson said, "And I certainly hope that we can make a lot of progress quite fast on trade. We've got our Secretary of State for International Trade, Liz Truss, is here. We hope to get going on that, always remembering that the [National Health Service (NHS)] is not for sale."
The claim that a post-Brexit free trade agreement between the U.S. and the United Kingdom would quadruple trade has been asserted by the Trump administration before, though some see that as highly unlikely.