As preliminary talks begin this week with the USA on a future trade deal, farming groups are beginning to feel a bit nervous about what lies ahead. Farming UK (HERE) quotes the Country Landowners Association (CLA) saying the Americans must comply with our food standards. One has to say it is absolutely heroic stuff. A lot of farmers voted for Brexit and many could well be regretting it in a year or two.
International Trade Secretary Liz Truss, who looks like a particularly timid primary school teacher, has pledged to drive a 'hard bargain' in any deal with the USA. No doubt the powerful and aggressive American Agri-food lobby will find that highly amusing.
Last year the US published its negotiating objectives for any UK trade deal (HERE) with CNN telling us they were "giving the United Kingdom a preview of what it can expect from take-no-prisoners trade negotiations after Brexit" (HERE). The Daily Mail (HERE) went with, "US demands UK DROPS 'barriers' to low-quality food imports in a post-Brexit trade deal".
Ms Truss may well soon find herself chained to a radiator in a Washington basement while ransom notes are passed to her team of negotiators. This will end very badly for farmers or there will be no trade deal. And given Johnson's treatment of Northern Ireland and the DUP together with his pressing need to get an early win and show the EU we mean business, I would advise farmers to prepare to sell while land prices aren't too bad.
Let me say that the idea the USA will comply with our standards is the delusion of the decade. They are addicted to cheap food in massive quantities and seem to like waddling around the mid-west in what appears to be inflatable fat suits but aren't.
A friend went to Florida many years ago, one of the first to holiday in the sunshine state with his wife and two kids. Wandering into a pizza restaurant they looked at the pictures of the various offerings and selected the ones they wanted. My friend ordered four and the waitress asked how many people were in his party, "Four", he answered. "You don't need four, one will be fine", she told him.
When it arrived, despite trying hard, they could not eat all of it! This cost about $1:50.
Politico have a nice piece about five things to watch for in the talks and Agriculture is No 2. Well worth a quick look.
Meanwhile, back in the Emerald Isle, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney thinks we are hurtling towards a new crisis (cue Brenda from Bristol, "Not another one!") according the Guardian. To which one can only ask why the surprise. It has been brewing for months. The paper reports:
"Coveney said progress in talks over the future relationship between the European Union and UK 'has not been good'.
" 'Unless there is significant progress in those negotiating rounds then I think we are going to reach yet another crisis point in the Brexit negotiations, which from the Irish point of view is very, very serious,' he told RTE’s Sean O’Rourke show'.
And it is indeed serious for Ireland as it is for other EU countries that have significant trade with the UK and have wisely elected serious politicians, like Coveney, trying to do something to help Europe recover from the terrible coronavirus pandemic. Negotiating with the third rate bunch of chancers currently governing us cannot be easy. The well-being of Britain is well down the list of priorities for them.
The Guardian report that trucks working on groupage - the consolidating of mixed loads into one trailer - and delivering goods to NI could face costs of £100,000 per trailer in duty and the costs of hundreds of individual customs declarations. This is the secret by-product of Johnson's quick deal cobbled together last year with Leo Varadkar in The Wirral, as he was under pressure to get a deal by the end of October. John Major's maxim was that the devil is in the detail but Johnson didn't want to find the devil so he didn't look.
And anyway he has always found EU regulations a bit of a laugh.
But he has signed an international treaty and unless something gives he could find Britain dragged before the International Court of justice (I assume) to face up to things for perhaps the first time in his life.
We can only hope.
