A summary of US-UK Negotiating Objectives for a future FTA has been published by the Americans (HERE). It does not make happy reading. The US is quite open about what it wants from a US-UK trade deal and the media report it gleefully. CNN says the United States is "giving the United Kingdom a preview of what it can expect from take-no-prisoners trade negotiations after Brexit" (HERE). The Daily Mail (HERE) goes with, "US demands UK DROPS 'barriers' to low-quality food imports in a post-Brexit trade deal".
I wonder what Julian Sturdy, the leave voting MP for York Outer and farmer thinks of it?
The papers make much of the importing of US chlorinated chicken and hormone fed beef as well as GM crops and there is indeed a lot in the negotiating objectives about agricultural products. Woody Johnson (that name again!) the US trade envoy (HERE), described warnings over US farming practices as "inflammatory and misleading" and smears from "people with their own protectionist agenda". He also said the EU's "Museum of Agriculture" approach was not sustainable, adding:
"American farmers are making a vital contribution to the rest of the world. Their efforts deserve to be recognised".
It demonstrates why the US has so few Free Trade Agreements. In spite of being about the same size economy as the EU, in existence for far longer and as a supposed champion of free trade, it has agreements with just 20 countries (HERE). By comparison the EU has FTAs with 70 countries. The USA know the value of their own market and never undersell it. The price is the devastation of your own farming industry.
If all the objectives set out in the guidelines were met British farming would be much diminished and we would then be relying on US farmers for much of our food. And adopting standards at variance with the EU would close off or restrict our exports to Europe. A double whammy as they say.
I don't believe our future food security should be relying on other countries anyway. If there was some major event that caused a shortage of cereals in North America could we really be sure of our own food supplies? I don't think so, not under men like Trump certainly.
I give you a few quotes from the American objectives. This is some of what they will be looking to achieve:
- Secure comprehensive market access for U.S. agricultural goods in the UK by reducing or eliminating tariffs.
- Reduce burdens associated with unnecessary differences in regulation, including through regulatory cooperation where appropriate.
- Establish specific commitments for trade in products developed through agricultural biotechnologies, remove expeditiously unwarranted barriers that block the export of U.S. food and agricultural products
- Establish rules that further encourage the adoption of international standards and strengthen implementation of the obligation to base SPS measures on science if the measure is more restrictive than the applicable international standard.
- Establish new and enforceable rules to eliminate unjustified trade restrictions or unjustified commercial requirements (including unjustified labeling) that affect new technologies.
- Include state-of-the-art commitments to ensure that the UK refrains from imposing measures in the financial services sector that restrict cross-border data flows or that require the use or installation of local computing facilities.
- Establish rules that reduce or eliminate barriers to U.S. investment in all sectors in the UK.
- Prevent the undermining of market access for U.S. products through the improper use of the UK’s system for protecting or recognizing geographical indications,
- Ensure that SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) accord non-discriminatory treatment with respect to the purchase and sale of goods and services.
- Exclude sub-federal coverage (state and local governments) from the commitments being negotiated. Keep in place domestic preferential purchasing programs such as:
- Preference programs for small businesses, women and minority owned businesses (which includes Native Americans), service-disabled veterans, and distressed areas;
- “Buy America” requirements on Federal assistance to state and local projects, transportation services, food assistance, and farm support; and
- Key Department of Defense procurement.
Note it isn't just agricultural stuff either. They want access to the NHS, they don't want to label foods with the content, they don't want restrictions on cross border data flows and want to lift geographical indicators that protect product names and so on.
The last sentence in the document might be the most worrying for British governments (which is probably why it's there) that have habitually tried to influence the value of sterling as way to make UK goods more competitive. The US says they want to:
"Ensure that the UK avoids manipulating exchange rates in order to prevent effective balance of payments adjustment or to gain an unfair competitive advantage".
As CNN say, the Americans do not intend to take any prisoners. We are jumping out of the imagined frying pan of the EU onto the real fire of the USA.
