Brexit: Trump will put US first in trade negotiations with Boris Johnson, ambassador warns

Former envoy to Washington questions whether US president will focus on UK deal in election year

(AP)

Donald Trump will put the interests of US farmers and pharmaceutical companies first in any post-Brexit trade negotiations with the UK, Britain’s former ambassador to Washington has warned.

And Sir Kim Darroch said that he was “sceptical” that Mr Trump would have the focus needed to conclude a trade deal during 2020, when his attention will be dominated by the fight for re-election as president.

Darroch, who quit last summer after the leak of cables in which he branded the Trump administration “inept” and “dysfunctional”, voiced doubt that the UK will be able to conduct parallel trade negotiations with both the remaining EU and US in the months after Brexit.

“it is going to be a hell of job just in terms of sucking up resources,” Sir Kim told The Guardian. “We have not done trade negotiations for 40 years. It is also going to be an electoral year in America and I don’t quite see how that is going to work.

“I am not sure president Trump is going to be massively focused on this trade negotiation while he is fighting for a second term and therefore whether the US trade representative is going to get quite the direction they need from the White House. So I am sceptical about the logistics and resources required.”

Britain will be forced to make a choice between maintaining EU standards and regulations or adopting US rules in some areas, he said.

And Trump will press for gains for his supporters in the US farming and business communities.

“He believes in America first,” Darroch said. “And he believes, particularly, in rewarding people who vote for him and that is American farmers and big American corporations.”

The US will pitch for “massively greater access” for agricultural products like chlorinated chicken and genetically modified crops, and will want the NHS to pay more for American pharmaceuticals, warned Darroch.

In return, the UK will be hoping for better access for financial services companies, rights for British airlines to break into the “fantastically lucrative” US domestic market, the ability for UK firms to bid for state and federal procurement markets and for arms manufacturers to sell to the US military.

“Maybe Boris’s relationship with Donald Trump is so fantastic that Trump will give him all this as a gift,” Darroch said.

“But are they going to while we’re saying we are not going to have chlorinated chicken, not going to have your hormone-treated beef, not going to have all your genetically modified crops and we are not going to pay twice as much as we do now for American pharmaceuticals?”