Yahoo Finance UK refuses to reveal analysis on post-Brexit US trade deal
The UK government’s trade department is refusing to reveal its analysis about the benefits and drawbacks of a potential free trade agreement with the United States, with a spokesperson telling Yahoo Finance UK on Monday that its research is still incomplete.
“The government will publish its approach to new free trade agreements before negotiations begin,” the Department for International Trade said in a written statement.
In the lead up to the Brexit vote in mid-2016, pro-Brexit campaigners promised that unshackling the UK from the European Union would allow it to broker free trade deals with large global partners, including the US, China and India.
The US is the UK’s second most important trading partner after the EU, with the UK sending about £100bn ($129bn) in goods and services to the US annually, or about 19% of its exports, according to data from the Office for National Statistics. It buys about £66bn ($85bn) in goods and services each year from the US, or about 11% of its total imports.
For comparison purposes, the UK sells about 43% of its goods and services into the EU, and buys about 54% of all its imports from the bloc.
The trade department said preliminary analysis showed a UK-US free trade deal could increase bilateral trade by around £40bn ($51bn) annually by 2030, excluding inflation.
A spokesperson said the department would not release its latest US trade analysis until after Brexit in March 2019 because it could “prejudice” the trade negotiations with the US.
The department got a Freedom of Information request for its latest US trade analysis by Unearthed, an investigative journalism division within Greenpeace. It told Unearthed that “there is limited public benefit in releasing analysis that is not complete”.
David Henig, a former UK trade negotiator and director of the European Centre for International Political Economy, said it makes sense that the government wouldn’t release analysis that wasn’t done. But it will have to release something soon.
“We know there would be winners and losers from a trade deal with the US. I would therefore expect the department to release a full economic impact assessment of a potential deal ahead of starting negotiations – this is normal international best practice,” he told Yahoo Finance UK. “In particular we need to know whether a trade deal with the US could have a negative impact on trade with the EU.”
The UK has been considering the benefits and drawbacks of negotiating and signing new free trade deals with the US, Australia and New Zealand. It’s also looking at the possibility of joining the CPTPP trade deal, which has been signed by 11 countries including Canada, Japan, Mexico and Vietnam.
The earliest it could implement any new free trade deals would be 2021.
Modern international free trade deals tend to take years to agree as they require alignment on issues related to product regulations, labour rules and environmental protections, among other things.
The UK pound has been sliding in recent days versus the US dollar as Brexit approaches and the government has yet to sign a comprehensive deal with its EU partners. The pound (GBPUSD=X) is currently trading around $1.29.
Related: What is a no-deal Brexit?
