U.K. to U.S.: We’re Your Top Military Ally, Now Help Our Economy
U.K. leader Sunak hopes visit to Washington will lead to greater economic ties for post-Brexit Britain
President Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are expected to discuss issues including how best to support Ukraine and how to regulate artificial intelligence.
PHOTO: LEAH MILLIS/REUTERS
By Max Colchester and Vivian Salama
June 7, 2023 5:30 am ET
President Biden will meet with the U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Washington on Thursday as the British leader looks to leverage his country’s status as the U.S.’s premier security ally to deepen economic cooperation between the two nations.
The visit by the British leader, which is set to include a joint press conference in the Rose Garden, represents White House recognition of the U.K’s robust support for Ukraine, Sunak’s willingness to toe the U.S. line on China, and recent U.K. moves to end its war of words with the European Union in the wake of Brexit, a rapprochement Washington hopes will cement western unity in the face of Russian aggression.
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For Sunak, the relationship with Washington is crucial. Ever since Britain quit the European Union in 2020, forging a tight diplomatic relationship with the U.S. has been a key aim of successive U.K. leaders as they try to extend the country’s influence beyond the EU to access markets across the globe. While Britain has cemented its position as a key military ally, it is now hoping to reinforce what British officials call economic security with the U.S. on areas such as energy and supply chains.
“Just as interoperability between our militaries has given us a battlefield advantage over our adversaries, greater economic interoperability will give us a crucial edge in the decades ahead,” Sunak in a statement.
The two leaders are expected to discuss a range of issues including how best to regulate artificial intelligence and support for Ukraine, officials say. During his visit to the White House, Sunak is expected to advocate for U.S. trade concessions, including allowing British electric-vehicle exports to qualify for U.S. tax breaks under the Inflation Reduction Act, officials said, although no deals are expected.
Jeremy Hunt, U.K. chancellor of the exchequer, has called the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act distortive of global markets.
PHOTO: CHRIS J. RATCLIFFE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
This week’s trip, which includes plans to watch a baseball game, masks an awkward economic truth. Britain risks losing out as a subsidy battle rages between the U.S., the EU and China, who are all pouring billions of dollars into bolstering domestic renewable-energy industries and other future technologies.
Britain has neither the balance sheet nor the political appetite to follow suit, analysts say.
British officials have warned that the Inflation Reduction Act’s $369 billion in incentives and funding for clean energy could unintentionally harm smaller U.S. allies. U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt recently called the act distortive of global markets. The U.K. government has pledged to outline its own more targeted industrial strategy in the fall.
“Working with the U.S. on that is critical,” says Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and Americas Programme at the Chatham House think tank. “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
After Brexit, the British government regained the ability to negotiate its own trade deals. Signing a trade pact with the U.S. was touted as a prize, but the Biden administration shut the idea down. Instead the U.K. government is pursuing cooperation agreements with individual U.S. states, such as a deal concluded last year with Indiana.
Biden and Sunak’s relationship has run hot and cold. When Sunak was appointed prime minister last October, Biden mispronounced his name. In May, Biden described a trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland the month prior, as to make sure “the Brits didn’t screw around” with the Good Friday Agreement, which secured peace on the island after years of sectarian tension.
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is expected to advocate for U.S. trade concessions, including allowing British electric-vehicle exports to qualify for U.S. tax breaks.
PHOTO: NIALL CARSON/POOL PA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
There was also lingering distrust following what U.S. officials saw as the British government’s chaotic handling of Brexit.
However, the war in Ukraine has proved the U.K.’s usefulness as an ally. As the first country to provide Ukraine with tanks and long-range missiles, Britain has led the way on military assistance and opened the path for other Western allies, including the U.S., to follow suit.
“As one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, the U.K. would have a critical role to play in any long-term security framework,” said Eric Ciaramella, a former White House official and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “In many ways, the U.K. has consistently been ahead of the curve on this issue,” he added.
“The Brits have been right there, literally at the fore in terms of helping Ukraine for the last 15 months,” said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
Write to Max Colchester at [Max.Colchester@wsj.com](mailto:Max.Colchester@wsj.com) and Vivian Salama at [vivian.salama@wsj.com](mailto:vivian.salama@wsj.com)
Easy to lay into this but it is a good point that he’s right to try to address. For years we’ve been the USA’s staunchest allies but to them we’re nothing more than a poodle to do their bidding. They see us as only just below a vassal state
We enjoy cash.
You appreciate cash.
We can certainly agree to disagree.
Great for them if they can reach a compromise, but “regaining national sovereignty” wasn’t a big deal with Brexit. The UK was the third-most powerful member state in the EU, and it had the same authority to direct policy in Brussels as Germany and France do. A trade agreement with the US will require the UK to conform to US regulations rather than the other way around.
“We inadvertently cut ourselves off of our most important market
Please help.
We will follow your rules.”
Is that really the desperate pitch Rish! is making?
What about all that “sovrinteee” and “taking back control”?
As an owner of a small UK brand which also sells to the EU and the US, I wanted to add that the vast majority of people misunderstand what an FTA means to trade. Cutting tariffs to 0 will have a tiny impact on trade with the US. The vast majority of tariffs are already very low (2-10% of cost of goods, so 0.4-2% of final price).
That’s why the government’s own assessment was that making new trade deals with twenty odd countries, including the US, was going to add 0.1% to GDP while leaving the EU was going to subtract 4-9%.
Forget the extremely important trade consideration of proximity. The EU single market is different as it completely removes all real barriers to trade (non-tariff barriers, i.e. regulatory / red tape). There is no FTA that gets anywhere close to that. It’s effectively the same as suddenly expanding your local market from 66mn to 500mn people.
My company has an addressable local market of 66mn, while my French and German competitors have a market of 440mm. This has and will continue to stunt the growth of UK SMEs. That’s why 30% of trade ties with the EU were cut due to Brexit (it became too expensive for many SMEs to carry on doing business there).
To put it another way, making trade deals with the US and China might add 0.2% of GDP. Re-joining the Single Market will add several orders of magnitude more and 10s to 100s of billions of Foreign Direct Investment per year (that we, as the primary English speaking EU country, used to get before the referendum and has now mostly evaporated – we straggled to get one third of France’s, and Sweden’s lol, FDI last year when we used to get 5-10x their FDI).
As a US expat living in the UK, and someone who loves Scotch, I heartily agree! Trade deal for scotch and we’ll give you our bourbon!
The Tories fucked their economy with Brexit. You made your bed, now sleep in it or make it right.
Listen, we’ve shot ourselves in both feet, so please can you carry us until they grow back.
Indeed. I have been trying to work out why this relationship is so one-sided.
The UK isn’t in a vulnerable position geographically in that it does not have unique threats like Israel does… why back the US militarily without something in return.
I would rather not be led into the USA’s shitty standards. Just give us a referendum to see if we want to re-join the EU. They keep saying we want sovereignty, and then keep signing to deals where someone else calls the shots. The USA is bloody awful to trade with, they always want the lion’s share. We had an equal partnership with the EU, just take that one.
Help our economy by buying the country and turning it into another US State. While you’re at it, you can help yourself to the NHS, and treat our population like shit, like you do your own. He’s got a point but I don’t trust the Tories, and Sunak is putting our head in the tiger’s mouth.
Didn’t we used to have some guys for this? What was their name again?
The Tory party is such a whiney bitch. Oh we fucked the economy and now are upset that we’ve lost face globally. Fucking morons. Brexiteers should be forced to wear dunce hats.
Perhaps Uncle Joe will let Rish! Play in Marine 1, the presidential helicopter, while he’s over there.
Rish! likes helicopters.
Translation: please get your private healthcare corporations to run our NHS.
Braying twat at a party pisses all over the floor and demands he be served different drinks and food to all the other guests (which he’s given). Despite this he starts shouting that he’s going to leave, takes fucking ages bellowing in the doorway but eventually leaves slamming the door.
Outside he realises he’s got no money for the taxi fare home and has soiled himself. Walks up to a mansion and starts ringing the doorbell. “Hello?! Let me in! I’ve shat myself! Why won’t you let me in?! Why won’t you be my friend? You CUNTS!” Sits down on the kerb crying and wanking into a Union Jack hankie.
We need to be able to trade easily and cheaply with our neighbours (and former real allies), not the USA.
Is this good idea though? Is the US a good example on how to run economics in country? Maybe, perhaps for chosen few, rest of population seems to be footing the bill more than in other countries.
Are they suggesting they’re asking for military assistance to subdue the British people who will inevitably fight the Terrorists, fascist, dystopia, late stage capitalist Tory’s?
Careful what you wish for.
They might help us but what we might never find out is what they get in return.
Pathetic optics. Cap in hand to our masters. So this is what post-Brexit exceptionalism looks like?
Now I’m not the type of person that usually laughs out loud at a news headline (even an The Onion one)
But damn lmfao… Please keep in mind that this backwards ass “3rd world with iphones” won’t even help its own economy, so good luck with that
Country makes itself poor, decides to start begging.
​
Thanks Tory voters and Brexit voting morons, couldn’t have done it without you.
Henry Kissinger once quipped that “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
Presumably we (the UK) are now down to the stage of begging Biden to let us become the newest State of the US, in my opinion Brexit was some Tory’s attempt to become the latest American state, even though Obama wasn’t encouraging, after all we have done almost everything that they had asked of us. This must also have been the reason that Sunak resolved the Northern Ireland issue, to show Biden that we would be good, however they don’t seem to have taken the hint so he has to ask openly.
the US have just given Ukraine £15bn to pay their public service workers, they don’t even care about their own poor
Thought this was a newsthump.com article going by the title.
Anyone looking to strike a deal with the US after the last thirty years of their foreign policy is desperate and stupid.
29 comments
U.K. to U.S.: We’re Your Top Military Ally, Now Help Our Economy
U.K. leader Sunak hopes visit to Washington will lead to greater economic ties for post-Brexit Britain
President Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are expected to discuss issues including how best to support Ukraine and how to regulate artificial intelligence.
PHOTO: LEAH MILLIS/REUTERS
By Max Colchester and Vivian Salama
June 7, 2023 5:30 am ET
President Biden will meet with the U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Washington on Thursday as the British leader looks to leverage his country’s status as the U.S.’s premier security ally to deepen economic cooperation between the two nations.
The visit by the British leader, which is set to include a joint press conference in the Rose Garden, represents White House recognition of the U.K’s robust support for Ukraine, Sunak’s willingness to toe the U.S. line on China, and recent U.K. moves to end its war of words with the European Union in the wake of Brexit, a rapprochement Washington hopes will cement western unity in the face of Russian aggression.
SUBSCRIBE NOW
For Sunak, the relationship with Washington is crucial. Ever since Britain quit the European Union in 2020, forging a tight diplomatic relationship with the U.S. has been a key aim of successive U.K. leaders as they try to extend the country’s influence beyond the EU to access markets across the globe. While Britain has cemented its position as a key military ally, it is now hoping to reinforce what British officials call economic security with the U.S. on areas such as energy and supply chains.
“Just as interoperability between our militaries has given us a battlefield advantage over our adversaries, greater economic interoperability will give us a crucial edge in the decades ahead,” Sunak in a statement.
The two leaders are expected to discuss a range of issues including how best to regulate artificial intelligence and support for Ukraine, officials say. During his visit to the White House, Sunak is expected to advocate for U.S. trade concessions, including allowing British electric-vehicle exports to qualify for U.S. tax breaks under the Inflation Reduction Act, officials said, although no deals are expected.
Jeremy Hunt, U.K. chancellor of the exchequer, has called the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act distortive of global markets.
PHOTO: CHRIS J. RATCLIFFE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
This week’s trip, which includes plans to watch a baseball game, masks an awkward economic truth. Britain risks losing out as a subsidy battle rages between the U.S., the EU and China, who are all pouring billions of dollars into bolstering domestic renewable-energy industries and other future technologies.
Britain has neither the balance sheet nor the political appetite to follow suit, analysts say.
British officials have warned that the Inflation Reduction Act’s $369 billion in incentives and funding for clean energy could unintentionally harm smaller U.S. allies. U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt recently called the act distortive of global markets. The U.K. government has pledged to outline its own more targeted industrial strategy in the fall.
“Working with the U.S. on that is critical,” says Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and Americas Programme at the Chatham House think tank. “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
After Brexit, the British government regained the ability to negotiate its own trade deals. Signing a trade pact with the U.S. was touted as a prize, but the Biden administration shut the idea down. Instead the U.K. government is pursuing cooperation agreements with individual U.S. states, such as a deal concluded last year with Indiana.
Biden and Sunak’s relationship has run hot and cold. When Sunak was appointed prime minister last October, Biden mispronounced his name. In May, Biden described a trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland the month prior, as to make sure “the Brits didn’t screw around” with the Good Friday Agreement, which secured peace on the island after years of sectarian tension.
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is expected to advocate for U.S. trade concessions, including allowing British electric-vehicle exports to qualify for U.S. tax breaks.
PHOTO: NIALL CARSON/POOL PA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
There was also lingering distrust following what U.S. officials saw as the British government’s chaotic handling of Brexit.
However, the war in Ukraine has proved the U.K.’s usefulness as an ally. As the first country to provide Ukraine with tanks and long-range missiles, Britain has led the way on military assistance and opened the path for other Western allies, including the U.S., to follow suit.
“As one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, the U.K. would have a critical role to play in any long-term security framework,” said Eric Ciaramella, a former White House official and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “In many ways, the U.K. has consistently been ahead of the curve on this issue,” he added.
“The Brits have been right there, literally at the fore in terms of helping Ukraine for the last 15 months,” said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
Write to Max Colchester at [Max.Colchester@wsj.com](mailto:Max.Colchester@wsj.com) and Vivian Salama at [vivian.salama@wsj.com](mailto:vivian.salama@wsj.com)
Easy to lay into this but it is a good point that he’s right to try to address. For years we’ve been the USA’s staunchest allies but to them we’re nothing more than a poodle to do their bidding. They see us as only just below a vassal state
We enjoy cash.
You appreciate cash.
We can certainly agree to disagree.
Great for them if they can reach a compromise, but “regaining national sovereignty” wasn’t a big deal with Brexit. The UK was the third-most powerful member state in the EU, and it had the same authority to direct policy in Brussels as Germany and France do. A trade agreement with the US will require the UK to conform to US regulations rather than the other way around.
“We inadvertently cut ourselves off of our most important market
Please help.
We will follow your rules.”
Is that really the desperate pitch Rish! is making?
What about all that “sovrinteee” and “taking back control”?
As an owner of a small UK brand which also sells to the EU and the US, I wanted to add that the vast majority of people misunderstand what an FTA means to trade. Cutting tariffs to 0 will have a tiny impact on trade with the US. The vast majority of tariffs are already very low (2-10% of cost of goods, so 0.4-2% of final price).
That’s why the government’s own assessment was that making new trade deals with twenty odd countries, including the US, was going to add 0.1% to GDP while leaving the EU was going to subtract 4-9%.
Forget the extremely important trade consideration of proximity. The EU single market is different as it completely removes all real barriers to trade (non-tariff barriers, i.e. regulatory / red tape). There is no FTA that gets anywhere close to that. It’s effectively the same as suddenly expanding your local market from 66mn to 500mn people.
My company has an addressable local market of 66mn, while my French and German competitors have a market of 440mm. This has and will continue to stunt the growth of UK SMEs. That’s why 30% of trade ties with the EU were cut due to Brexit (it became too expensive for many SMEs to carry on doing business there).
To put it another way, making trade deals with the US and China might add 0.2% of GDP. Re-joining the Single Market will add several orders of magnitude more and 10s to 100s of billions of Foreign Direct Investment per year (that we, as the primary English speaking EU country, used to get before the referendum and has now mostly evaporated – we straggled to get one third of France’s, and Sweden’s lol, FDI last year when we used to get 5-10x their FDI).
As a US expat living in the UK, and someone who loves Scotch, I heartily agree! Trade deal for scotch and we’ll give you our bourbon!
The Tories fucked their economy with Brexit. You made your bed, now sleep in it or make it right.
Listen, we’ve shot ourselves in both feet, so please can you carry us until they grow back.
Indeed. I have been trying to work out why this relationship is so one-sided.
The UK isn’t in a vulnerable position geographically in that it does not have unique threats like Israel does… why back the US militarily without something in return.
I would rather not be led into the USA’s shitty standards. Just give us a referendum to see if we want to re-join the EU. They keep saying we want sovereignty, and then keep signing to deals where someone else calls the shots. The USA is bloody awful to trade with, they always want the lion’s share. We had an equal partnership with the EU, just take that one.
Help our economy by buying the country and turning it into another US State. While you’re at it, you can help yourself to the NHS, and treat our population like shit, like you do your own. He’s got a point but I don’t trust the Tories, and Sunak is putting our head in the tiger’s mouth.
Didn’t we used to have some guys for this? What was their name again?
The Tory party is such a whiney bitch. Oh we fucked the economy and now are upset that we’ve lost face globally. Fucking morons. Brexiteers should be forced to wear dunce hats.
Perhaps Uncle Joe will let Rish! Play in Marine 1, the presidential helicopter, while he’s over there.
Rish! likes helicopters.
Translation: please get your private healthcare corporations to run our NHS.
Braying twat at a party pisses all over the floor and demands he be served different drinks and food to all the other guests (which he’s given). Despite this he starts shouting that he’s going to leave, takes fucking ages bellowing in the doorway but eventually leaves slamming the door.
Outside he realises he’s got no money for the taxi fare home and has soiled himself. Walks up to a mansion and starts ringing the doorbell. “Hello?! Let me in! I’ve shat myself! Why won’t you let me in?! Why won’t you be my friend? You CUNTS!” Sits down on the kerb crying and wanking into a Union Jack hankie.
We need to be able to trade easily and cheaply with our neighbours (and former real allies), not the USA.
Is this good idea though? Is the US a good example on how to run economics in country? Maybe, perhaps for chosen few, rest of population seems to be footing the bill more than in other countries.
Are they suggesting they’re asking for military assistance to subdue the British people who will inevitably fight the Terrorists, fascist, dystopia, late stage capitalist Tory’s?
Careful what you wish for.
They might help us but what we might never find out is what they get in return.
Pathetic optics. Cap in hand to our masters. So this is what post-Brexit exceptionalism looks like?
Now I’m not the type of person that usually laughs out loud at a news headline (even an The Onion one)
But damn lmfao… Please keep in mind that this backwards ass “3rd world with iphones” won’t even help its own economy, so good luck with that
Country makes itself poor, decides to start begging.
​
Thanks Tory voters and Brexit voting morons, couldn’t have done it without you.
Henry Kissinger once quipped that “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
Presumably we (the UK) are now down to the stage of begging Biden to let us become the newest State of the US, in my opinion Brexit was some Tory’s attempt to become the latest American state, even though Obama wasn’t encouraging, after all we have done almost everything that they had asked of us. This must also have been the reason that Sunak resolved the Northern Ireland issue, to show Biden that we would be good, however they don’t seem to have taken the hint so he has to ask openly.
the US have just given Ukraine £15bn to pay their public service workers, they don’t even care about their own poor
Thought this was a newsthump.com article going by the title.
Anyone looking to strike a deal with the US after the last thirty years of their foreign policy is desperate and stupid.
Oh sorry I forgot where I am.