The problem with Liz Truss’s plan for an ethical post-Brexit trade policy

The international trade secretary’s ‘values-driven approach’ is admirable – but a quick look at recent history shows that will be harder than it looks, writes Sean O'Grady

The minister’s demands will probably lose orders (Getty)

As international trade secretary, Liz Truss has one of the toughest jobs in politics – trying to make some kind of sense, let alone success, of the grand-sounding but nebulous concept of “Global Britain”: making Brexit a success, in other words.

To her credit, she is trying. Pre-empting the end of the Trump era, she has used a keynote speech at Chatham House to indicate that Global Britain will promote a rules-based international trading system, rather than, presumably helping to isolate and break the World Trade Organisation, as the US administration has tried. From the Department for International Trade there will be no mini-me echo of Donald Trump, no “Britain First” approach to new trading arrangements. Truss recalls the era of Cobden and Bright, the enlightenment values of Macaulay and the timeless principles of free trade in contrast to the protectionist populists of the US and, implicitly, within the ranks of her own party. 

Give or take a few wedges of Stilton, the recent trade deals with Japan and Cote d’Ivoire apparently stand testament to this new spirit of economic liberalism. She didn’t mention Michel Barnier by name, but she did refer to the EU’s “innovation-phobic” mindset and high tariff wall (and one that British farmers and others have sheltered behind for half a century).