Joe Biden to confront Liz Truss over plans to tear up Northern Ireland protocol

US president wants ‘no threat to Good Friday Agreement’ – and will ‘speak in detail with her about that‘

Joe Biden will confront Liz Truss over her plans to override the Northern Ireland protocol at their US meeting, having already clashed with her over economic policy.

The White House said the US president will tell the prime minister to ensure there is “no threat” to the Irish peace process from the flashpoint legislation to rewrite the Brexit agreement.

“The president will communicate his strong view that the Good Friday Agreement, which is the touchstone of peace and stability in Northern Ireland, must be protected,” it said.

Mr Biden would urge Ms Truss and the EU to show the “courage” to resolve the controversy, which threatens to reopen decades-old wounds, said Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser.

It is imperative that “there is no threat to the fundamental principles of Good Friday Agreement, and he’ll speak in detail with her about that in the conversation,” he said.

The meeting comes after Ms Truss admitted the Brexiteer dream of a trade deal with the US is dead, in an embarrassment for Leave campaigners who claimed it would be easy to strike.

The new prime minister has insisted she will not back down over the Bill to override the protocol, which has already cleared the Commons – insisting the UK is “defending the Good Friday Agreement”.

The crisis threatens a hugely damaging trade war if the EU carries out its threat to retaliate for what it considers to be a breach of the deal Boris Johnson signed and hailed as “fantastic” in 2019.

The UK argues the legislation is needed to remove trade border checks in the Irish Sea and persuade the Democratic Unionist Party to end its boycott of power-sharing at Stormont.

However, it goes much further than customs controls – also targeting the role of the European Court of Justice in overseeing disputes and aiming to restore the UK’s ability to decide VAT rates.

The EU insists it has put forward proposals to ease the burden of checks and points to the UK’s refusal to sign up to common veterinary rules to reduce the need for much of the bureaucracy.

Mr Sullivan said the prime minister’s remarks dismissing prospects of a US-UK trade deal were “not a surprise to me”, pointing to Mr Biden’s previous comments.

He called them “a fair statement of reality about the sheer level of detail into which one must go to complete a comprehensive free trade agreement”.

And he added: “That’s doubly true with respect to a potential US-UK trade agreement, because, as President Biden has said many times, he’s looking to move beyond the old model of an FTA.”