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The United States government has been privately pressuring the United Kingdom in bilateral trade talks to choose between the United States and China.
The United States seeks to insert a clause allowing it to withdraw from parts of the agreement if Britain reaches a trade agreement with another country that the United States did not approve.
The proposed clause did not specifically mention China, but British diplomats in Washington regard it as a lever to deter relations between the United Kingdom and China.
The UK had seen it as equivalent to public pressure that the United States had been exerting on Britain not to reach an agreement with Huawei to provide the UK’s 5G telecommunications network.
Most of the controversy over the US-UK trade talks so far has focused on drug prices, food standards and a digital tax.
The proposed clause is based on Article 30 of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that blocks non-market economies. Although the United Kingdom does not formally oppose such clauses, British diplomats are concerned that, in the current context, it will give the United States broad and unbalanced influence over UK policy towards China.
UK diplomats are more widely concerned that Donald Trump’s determination to use the coronavirus outbreak as a political stick with which to beat China and secure his reelection will place the UK government under intense external pressure to align with the United States against China. Support for a stronger anti-China stance is growing in conservative banks.
Former Chancellor George Osborne said he was confident, however, that Boris Johnson was not going to succumb, saying: “Interestingly, the cabinet member most in favor of the engagement with China is the prime minister. He is perfectly prepared to withstand some of the pressure from his rear benches. “
Osborne, speaking at a Strand Group webinar, added: “Multilateralism is a way for countries to cooperate on shared goals. It cannot have this and side with the United States to isolate China from the global system. It is the longest continuous civilization in the world. “
Osborne recalled that when he was chancellor, Johnson, who at the time was mayor of London, accompanied him on a trip to China and fully understood the need to cooperate with Beijing.
In a document from the Harvard Kennedy school of government co-written by former Treasury Minister Ed Balls, the authors claim that a full trade deal is impossible before the United States presidential election in November.
They also suggest that even a mini-deal could present a dilemma for the UK, as it could draw it into an emerging US economic and foreign policy. USA Based on anti-China bilateralism, and thus closing the door on plans for a global Britain.
The document quotes an unidentified UK government official who says: “The talks could end with a political statement pushing the UK towards an anti-China and anti-cooperative worldview.”
He also quotes a UK finance official as saying: “The United States government seems to want to use the pandemic to isolate China from the global economy, to manufacture on the ground and redesign the global economy, to prioritize security while saying that you can’t have China. ” as part of the system because of how they behave.
“Is this electoral rhetoric? Or is it potentially much more dangerous, a desire to have a different global economy where China is not part of the system? “
A Foreign Ministry official is quoted as saying: “The strategy is not to leave the EU and discover that the United States is setting the agenda and that the United Kingdom is bound to the United States because of a trade agreement.”
Some UK officials believe there is still merit in the UK trying to reach a preliminary preliminary agreement with China ahead of the US presidential election, arguing that it will pressure the EU to reach an agreement with the UK by end of agreement.
They also believe that the prospect of a deal with the UK could be used as a lever to persuade Trump to take a more multilateral approach to the coronavirus crisis.
