"There aren’t currently any negotiations taking place with the US and I don’t have any expectation that those are going to start in the short to medium term.”
Liz Truss has been forced to admit that the chances of a post-Brexit trade deal with the US are unlikely in the near future, ahead of her first bilateral meeting with U.S. president Joe Biden.
In what amounts to yet another broken Brexit promise, Truss told reporters on the plane to the US: “There aren’t currently any negotiations taking place with the US and I don’t have any expectation that those are going to start in the short to medium term.”
She added that her “number one issue” for discussion with U.S. President Joe Biden was “global security and making sure that we are able to collectively deal with Russian aggression.”
A trade deal with the U.S. was cited by Brexiteers as one of the major benefits of leaving the EU.
Former prime minister Boris Johnson’s hopes of an early U.S. trade deal were also dashed early last year, when Biden made clear that no such deal was on the cards.
Truss is also due to have her first bilateral meeting in the afternoon with French President Emmanuel Macron, which comes after she claimed that the ‘jury’s out’ over whether Macron was friend or foe.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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