Dr Karen Jackson, Assistant Head of School at Westminster Business School, co-wrote an article with Dr Oleksandr Shepotylo from Aston University for The Conversation about what the UK can hope to get in a trade deal with the US.
Talking about the recent history of UK trade, they wrote: “Trade between the UK and US reached an all time high of more than US$140 billion in 2019, according to UN COMTRADE and has been growing steadily for the past two years. Meanwhile, there was a slow decline in UK-EU trade in 2019 – although its value is still much higher at US$560 billion.
“But, as expected, UK exports and imports fell sharply in May and June 2020, with some recovery in July and August. It is clear that the 2019 growth in UK-US trade has been reversed, largely as a result of the pandemic. This makes UK-US negotiations on further trade liberalisation increasingly important.”
They later added: “There are a number of reasons for the lack of progress: the US election got in the way, and the UK has been negotiating with a range of partners all at the same time. While the UK has one of the largest teams of trade negotiators, they are still new to this process, since all these arrangements were in the hands of EU trade negotiators until very recently. There are also substantial differences of opinion.”
Read the full article on The Conversation’s website.
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