At this point we have run several quotes from GBD’s January event “Beyond Brexit.” This one is from the event’s concluding Q & A session. It was a very rich discussion, and we may well revisit it for one nugget or another later in the year. Today’s quote, however, is the last focused effort to highlight specific elements of our January 28 event. It could not be more fitting.
David Salmonsen
is the Senior Director for Congressional Relations at the American Farm Bureau Federation and, we would add, a highly respected and very insightful member of the Washington trade community. Today’s quote is from the question he asked at the tail end of GBD’s “Beyond Brexit.” That discussion included a fair amount of commentary and speculation on the possible character and content of a U.S.-UK trade agreement. Mr. Salmonsen asked:
Where does the British government, do you think – we’re all speculating – or British public opinion for that matter — where do they want to be different from the current EU regulatory regime? You know, as Shawna [Morris] pointed out, all of us in U.S. agriculture have a long history of all the things we haven’t liked about the EU approach going back, now, many decades. So just whether it’s – not just ag and food but across the many industries – where does the UK want to differentiate itself from where the EU has always been?
Mr. Salmonsen’s mention of comments made by
Shawna Morris
is a thread worth following, as she was quite clear about how much hinges on the answer to Mr. Salmonsen’s question, especially for American agriculture.
Ms. Morris, who represents the U.S. dairy industry, was one of four panelists at the January 28 event. Someone from the Ways and Means Committee had asked the panel how they would feel about a small, scaled back agreement between the U.S. and the UK, one that focused mainly on digital trade and services and left aside the difficult issues of agriculture. This was Shawna Morris’s response:
I’d say from dairy, and I think it’s probably safe to say from the broader ag perspective too:
a narrow or scaled down agreement
with the UK
would be a huge missed opportunity.
You know, I think we have a really great chance here to negotiate with probably the single Member State that we can probably see the most with eye-to-eye and that, historically, has been on a very similar page, even on some of these very thorny issues with the U.S.
What it is going to hinge on is UK independence, regulatory and policy independence.
If they are required to simply take lock, stock, and barrel every regulatory change and new policy that the EU continues to issue moving forward, that’s going to be really tough to resolve. I really don’t see a positive way forward. On the other hand, if they can set their own decisions, I think even these tough ag issues are achievable.
