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British Environment Minister Eustice (archive picture): Hope for a quick agreement with the USA
Photo: BEN STANSALL / AFP
In view of the so far unsuccessful bilateral negotiations with the USA, Great Britain is also considering joining the existing USMCA free trade agreement.
Although London is aiming for a "bilateral trade agreement" with the US, Environment Minister George Eustice told Sky News.
The British government was not ruling out anything, he added when asked whether UK accession to the trade pact between the USA, Mexico and Canada was conceivable.
At a meeting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the White House on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden spoke cautiously about a possible free trade agreement with the United Kingdom and merely stated that talks on such an agreement would continue.
Eustice said his administration continues to hope for an agreement with the US. For the US government, however, this "simply isn't a priority," he admitted. Johnson had also dampened hopes of an early agreement on Tuesday. His government wanted to reach an agreement as soon as possible, he said, without giving a target date.
The US MP Brendan Boyle referred to the comparatively low volume of trade between the two countries.
While the US conducts around 30 percent of its trade with Canada and Mexico, the UK's share is just 2.5 percent and thus at the level of Taiwan, Vietnam and India, wrote the politician von Biden's Democrats on Twitter.
"So if some are confused as to why a trade deal with the UK is not a high priority, now they know".
The USMCA free trade agreement entered into force in July 2020.
It replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Great Britain officially left the EU in January 2020.
At the beginning of this year, the United Kingdom also withdrew from the common internal market and the customs union.
That is why London has to re-examine numerous trade relations with other countries and conclude its own agreements.
mic / AFP
