UK rejects 'Britain First' trade policy
Britain will on Thursday chide the "pernicious" trade practices of America and Europe, even while it tries to pin down handles its most significant allies in a post-Brexit drive to reinvent itself as a free of charge trading nation. The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought havoc on global supply chains, fanning global trade tensions as nations scramble for scarce goods and make an effort to protect their own economical interests.
Britain left the European Union in January, giving it the energy to negotiate its trade deals for the very first time in 45 years - something ministers have promoted as the largest economic benefit of leaving the world's largest trading bloc.
Trade minister Liz Truss will lay out the principles that underpin Britain's future trade policy in a speech that takes aim at the damage due to both protectionism and unfettered state-subsidisation. "She'll argue for too much time the world has turned a blind eye to 'pernicious' trading practices," said a statement accompanying excerpts of her remarks released beforehand. Truss will say those approaches experienced a "corrosive influence on the foundations of our rules-based free trade system, spreading disillusionment and distrust."
"Britain is learning from the twin errors of values-free globalization and protectionism, and we are instead rooting our approach for global free trade inside our values of sovereignty, democracy, the rule of law and a fierce commitment to high standards," she will say. While Britain's government wants the freedom in order to provide state aid, it really is opposed to the over-use of subsidies and does not have any plans to be highly interventionist. Her comments come at the same time when practically a trillion dollars per year of trade with Britain's closest neighbor is under threat, with the clocking ticking right down to a Nov 3 US election that could mean Britain's years-long courting folks President Donald Trump is wasted.
Britain is urgently negotiating a trade handle the EU in order to avoid widespread disruption when a transition period of de-facto EU membership ends on Dec 31. It has also put a US free trade agreement near the top of its post-Brexit wish list. Nevertheless, in a primary mention of Trump's 'America First' policy, Truss will say "we will never be pulling up the drawbridge in an autarkic Britain First approach." She'll say the EU can be an "innovation-phobic" protectionist institution which has held Britain back and, without naming China explicitly, criticize those that use state-owned enterprises to market goods all over the world as "mercenaries of global trade".
