Former USTR Suggests UK Trade Deal Should Be Done
Bob Zoellick, a U.S. trade representative during the George W. Bush administrations, said that a successful way of completing a free trade agreement with the United Kingdom would be to connect the North American agenda to the U.K. “It gives you more weight,” he said during a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace webinar Feb. 17. “It helps you with North American integration.” He suggested that the FTA could look at carbon emissions, as well as labor, and he believes it could get bipartisan support for extending trade promotion authority, so it could get done.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Zoellick said trade is missing in the discussion of U.S.-U.K. relations, and it's needed. “Sometimes the discussion of U.S.-U.K. trade is seen as an antithesis to the European Union. I think that would be a mistake. It needs to give the U.K. some sense of optionality in the service sector,” he said.
Roz Engel, a Carnegie scholar, said that “trade is not a dirty word among the American middle class.” However, she added, “right now, the appetite is a little low for big ambitious trade deals.”