There were incentives for British Prime Minister Theresa May and US President Donald Trump to meet in Washington last week-end. The changing of the guard in the White House and the UK's torrid transit to Brexit formed a compelling backdrop .Those two events may dawn as game changers but are only subject to stringent reality checks .
In so many ways, Donald Trump has signalled a certain messianic isolationism and an intent to form new alliances and cut bilateral deals. With such 'ground-breaking' agendas of the new incumbent in Washington, who could be more welcome to the US president to engage with than a British prime minister. Particularly when the latter is dealing with a pesky EU. She is tasked to steer Britain out of the EU by 2019, a process Donald's far-right predilections have chimed in with.
Trump on a populist mission had leaned to The United Kingdom Independent Party(UKIP) chief Nigel Farage who had spearheaded the Brexit campaign. Little wonder, Nigel was the first British politician to be embraced by Donald Trump with open arms after his stunning victory.
Much water flowed down the river Thames since then. There has been clamouring from both sides of the aisle that Theresa place the plans for transition out of the EU upfront on the floor of the House without ado. The matter went to the court. Now the government is to bring a bill to parliament to start the legal Brexit process "within days after the SC ruled against Theresa May's plans and decreed that MPs were entitled to vote whether to trigger Articl 50". In other words, the government cannot trigger Article 50 without an act of parliament authorising it to do so.
So if allaying the fear of isolationism was considered necessary for the Trump administration, Theresa May, for her part, has had a situation cast in stone to step up transition on a solid basis to meet the deadline. The court verdict was a slap on her wrist to take a right course of action on Brexit.
The British prime minister might well have thought along two lines: First, in view of the special relations Britain has had historically with the US she could turn to Washington for a trade deal as part of preparation for the exit. Secondly, Theresa might have aimed at cooperative understanding with the American president to strengthen her negotiating position with the EU. If Theresa May's post-meeting comments are anything to go by, it seems her talks with Trump may have mellowed his positions on continuing sanctions against Russia for its aggression on Eukrane. If I heard Theresa right she said that both leaders affirmed their belief in NATO.
But Trump is known to have virtually ridiculed Article 5 of the Atlantic Charter whereby if any member country were to be attacked, it would be deemed to be an attack on other members of the alliance. Trump seems to maintain that a country failing to pay up mandatory contributions to Alliance's coffer would not be entitled to the collective protection clause. NATO protagonists argue that Article 5 was invoked after 9/11 against al-Quaeda,Taleban etc. and that there is no ' cost effective' consideration unlike in business where a security exigency arises needing prompt response.
The implication is that in defence of democracy, civil liberties and rule of law, you are better served by a principled intervention. One may however question how justified a particular intervention has been and whether it has unleashed forces inimical to the best interest of the humanity. That is where perhaps a reform of the NATO finds a resonance to conform to the vastly changed objective realities since the cold war days.
With Brexit pencilled in for 2019 and multilateral trade pacts being abandoned by the US, prevailing trade figures between big partners need to be analysed to project on the likely degree of shift in the present trading equations. Suffice it to say that the changes will be slow in coming and that any paradigm shift should be ruled out.
The trade statistics between the USA and the UK; between the EU and the UK; and between the US and the EU are as follows:
A) Trade balance in favour of the UK against the US in 2015 stood at $ 9.1b;
B)The EU-27 exports worth $290 b to the UK while the latter exports goods and services valued at $ 220 to EU. So the UK runs a deficit of $70 b with the EU;and
C) The EU and the US are main trading partners with a large share of world trade transacted between them. The EU's exports to the US are greater than its imports.
So the EU 27 has trade surplus with both the US and UK.
Pragmatism dictates that neither the US nor the UK can afford to pare down their relationship with the European Union.
A former US ambassador to the European Union Anthony Gardner, warned, "A true free trade agreement between UK and EU won't be easy or fast for many reasons. A US-UK(trade deal) won't be easy or quick either. It will take several years at least and depends on UK-EU trade relationship."
As a EU spokesperson said of the Theresa attempt at sketching a trade deal to US president, "You can read the menu but not order food."
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