Ambassador Lighthizer did not mention China in his remarks last Tuesday, not by name anyway. Nevertheless, as we read the above, the reference to the importance of “trusted trading partners;” the worry about “depending purely on cheap imports for strategic products,” and the emphasis on the “need to have a healthy manufacturing base” all point to concerns arising from U.S.-China trade.
More broadly, and more positively, our sense is that the Trump administration is enthusiastic about a free trade agreement with the United Kingdom because it sees such an agreement as facilitating trade among fundamentally private parties. Agreements with China, we suspect, are viewed more as geopolitical accommodations with a rival power. As for other agreements, well, they are somewhere on that continuum.
By contrast, the UK views the hoped for deal with the United States as a template for its trading relationships with the rest of the world. Ms. Truss said that quite clearly, and the larger goal is hardly a new one. Think back, for example, to the trade speech
Boris Johnson
gave last February at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. This passage more than makes the point:
[H]umanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.
And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role.
