{"id":672452,"date":"2026-09-04T15:28:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T15:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/672452\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T15:28:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T15:28:17","slug":"us-says-britain-not-taking-advantage-of-brexit-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/672452\/","title":{"rendered":"US says Britain not taking advantage of Brexit \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK is choosing \u201cBrussels over America\u201d, causing a \u201cproblem\u201d for London\u2019s effort to expand a trade deal with the US, warned US President Donald Trump\u2019s top negotiator.<\/a><\/p>\n

Jamieson Greer<\/a>, the US trade representative, said that the UK had failed to take advantage of Brexit<\/a> by aligning with European Union-made rules and closing its market to American goods and still had \u201cpretty high tariffs\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how we interpret it\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009based on my conversations with the UK, where I say, \u2018Hey, you\u2019re free of the EU (European Union). Why don\u2019t you liberalise a little bit, accept goods made to American standards, accept agricultural goods made to American standards?\u2019\u201d Greer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they say, \u2018Well, we have to wait and see what the EU says about it\u2019. You know that is a problem for us and that\u2019s challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if the UK was using the freedom given to it by Brexit, Greer replied: \u201cNo, they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The comments from Trump\u2019s top trade official come as Britain and the EU push to deepen ties six years after the UK exited the bloc, and as Trump rattles allies across the Atlantic with threats to impose new tariffs, seize the Danish territory of Greenland, and curb US support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato).<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Brexit regrets for Ireland\u2019s favourite Frenchman Michel BarnierOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

They also come as Andy Burnham, the UK\u2019s new prime minister, has signalled his determination to move closer to Brussels, telling parliament on Wednesday that Brexit had damaged the British economy.<\/p>\n

Burnham on Thursday pledged to work on the \u201cUK\u2019s drive to get closer to Europe\u201d at a meeting in London with French president Emmanuel Macron, according to a Downing Street readout of their meeting.<\/p>\n

\"\"Has the Government\u2019s strategy to keep fuel costs down proved to be \u2018knee-jerk\u2019 and difficult to reverse?<\/p>\n

As part of the UK\u2019s \u201creset\u201d with the EU, Burnham is poised to sign a deal that would remove border checks on UK food and drink exports to the bloc. This requires Britain to comply with strict EU food standards that Washington has long regarded as protectionist.<\/p>\n

The deal would also, in effect, block the UK from importing US products, such as chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-raised beef, which are barred from the EU.<\/p>\n

The UK government has also resisted US demands that it recognise American industrial goods standards as it looks to align with EU rules on cars, chemicals and other industrial sectors to facilitate trade with the bloc.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Why did economists get the impact of Brexit on Ireland so wrong?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Trump has presided over a tumultuous 20 months of trade relations, alarming US commercial partners and global markets by imposing steep duties before negotiating lower levies and offering carve-outs and exemptions.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, the US president has escalated trade tensions with Canada against a backdrop of increased hostility with Iran that has driven up energy prices and contributed to a global bond market sell-off.<\/p>\n

The UK clinched the first trade deal struck with Washington since the start of Trump\u2019s 2025 trade war, securing cuts to punitive tariffs on cars and steel.<\/p>\n

But a 10 per cent tariff on most British goods has left the UK facing a much tougher trading relationship with the US than before Trump\u2019s second presidency.<\/p>\n

Although the deal with the UK originally contained Washington\u2019s pledge to offer in effect zero tariffs on some steel and aluminium imports, the US has instead kept in place a 25 per cent national security tariff on the metals \u2014 although most countries pay a higher 50 per cent rate.<\/p>\n

In return, the UK offered US farmers and ranchers a lower tariff on a quota of beef and removed duties on 1.4 billion litres of US ethanol.<\/p>\n

The UK was also handed a three-year carve-out from US pharmaceutical and medical technology tariffs, in exchange for higher levels of spending on medicines by the country\u2019s National Health Service.<\/p>\n

But the two countries have failed since then to move beyond what was intended to be a first step towards a broader deal.<\/p>\n

Greer said he enjoyed a \u201cgood relationship\u201d with UK business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, and that an early trade deal struck between Washington and London had been \u201cbeneficial to both sides\u201d and \u201ca good early harvest\u201d.<\/p>\n

But he said there were \u201csticking points\u201d in talks between the two sides, notably over agricultural and farm goods.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe UK has had free access into the US agricultural market, where we\u2019ve had very limited access on the US side into the UK agricultural market,\u201d Greer said, adding that Washington had a trade deficit in farm goods with the UK.<\/p>\n

He added he would also like to see the UK reduce duties in some sectors.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009if you read the Economist and the FT, [the UK will] say we\u2019re the bastion of free trade, but they still have pretty high tariffs on the US in certain sectors,\u201d Greer said. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK is choosing \u201cBrussels over America\u201d, causing a \u201cproblem\u201d for London\u2019s effort to expand a trade deal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,6504,356,13,14,6,56702,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,1411,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-672452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-brexit","tag-donald-trump","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-jamieson-greer","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-us-tariffs","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117213483559607950","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}