[CTC] UK’s Truss, Tai to talk trade-distorting practices, digital trade, lamb access

Tue Jul 13 02:54:34 PDT 2021

UK’s Truss, Tai to talk trade-distorting practices, digital trade, lamb access
By Madeline Halpert, Inside US Trade 
6/12/2021

United Kingdom Secretary of State for International Trade Liz Truss will meet with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai this week in Washington, DC, to discuss market-distorting trade practices, digital trade and climate change, according to the British government.

Also on the agenda for Truss: Opening the U.S. market to British lamb producers.

Truss is set to meet Tai during a five-day visit to the U.S. from July 11 to 15, during which the two will discuss “closer cooperation” on threats to free and fair global trade, a British government statement <https://www.gov.uk/government/news/liz-truss-visits-us-to-foster-closer-cooperation-on-making-global-trade-free-and-fair> reads.

USTR has yet to announce the visit.

While its statement does not mention China by name, the British government said Truss and Tai would use the meetings to focus on how the two sides can work together to combat market-distorting trade practices such as industrial subsidies and dumping, language often used by the U.S. in decrying Chinese economic policies.

“Workers in both the UK and [the] U.S. have suffered when their products are unfairly undercut,” Truss said in a July 11 statement. “We must work together with our friends and allies in the U.S. to protect free enterprise from practices like industrial subsidies and intellectual property theft, which give trade a bad name. With UK-U.S. trade supporting over a million jobs in both countries, there is clear reason to work together to deepen our trade and investment ties and build back better.”

The U.S. and the UK also will discuss how to defend workers and companies that “play by the rules against unfair practices in the global trading system” by combating forced labor and strengthening supply-chain resilience, the British government said. In June, during a G7 summit, the U.S. and the UK, along with the five other G7 countries, agreed <https://insidetrade.com/node/171547> to work together to ensure globally supply chains were free from forced labor, a key issue for the Biden administration in its developing approach to China.

Truss’s visit to the U.S. comes a month after the U.S. and the UK agreed to a five-year moratorium <https://insidetrade.com/node/171572> on all tariffs levied in the near 20-year-old Boeing-Airbus disputes. Both Truss and Biden contended the agreement would serve as a way to challenge China’s “unfair trade practices.” The U.S. and the European Union struck <https://insidetrade.com/node/171554> an identical deal that week.

The U.S.-UK Boeing-Airbus agreement also built on a “revitalized” Atlantic Charter <https://insidetrade.com/sites/insidetrade.com/files/documents/2021/jun/wto2021_0270b.pdf> in which the two sides pledged to “enable open and fair trade between nations.” Truss’s visit to the U.S. this week provides an opportunity to “build on commitments made by the UK and U.S.” in the charter to deepen trade ties, the British government said.

In a tweet <https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/1414525727463165955> on Monday, Truss said she also planned to discuss with Tai how to secure access to the U.S. market for British lamb producers.

During U.S.-UK free trade deal negotiations -- which began in 2020 under the Trump administration -- the UK pushed the U.S. <https://insidetrade.com/node/169307> to accept British lamb and haggis. The U.S. has had a ban on British lamb since the late 1980s, following an outbreak of mad cow disease in the UK. The U.S. also has blocked imports of animal lung -- a key ingredient in haggis -- since the early 1970s. During negotiations in 2020, the UK, however, indicated it was not willing to accept most U.S. chicken -- banned in the UK since 1997 due to American poultry producers’ use of a chlorine wash -- into its market in return, British officials said at the time.

While then-USTR Robert Lighthizer in December 2020 said the U.S. and the UK were close to a free trade deal, the two sides never reached such an agreement, as the UK had hoped they would. The Biden administration has not said whether it will reopen the talks, while Tai has said she is conducting an “ongoing review” of U.S.-UK trade relations.

During her visit to the U.S. this week, Truss is pursuing “deeper trade ties” that could “encourage the creation of many more,” the British government said on Sunday.

Truss also will speak with “leading Democrats” and the tech industry about how a future U.S.-UK free trade agreement can “set gold-standard rules” on digital trade, the British government said. According to the government, the U.S. and the UK are both world leaders for start-up businesses and “unicorn companies.”

Truss this week also will travel to the West Coast to promote the UK as a “leading investment destination” ahead of the UK government-led Global Investment Summit <https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-rolling-out-green-carpet-for-global-investment-summit> in October. During her West Coast visit, Truss will meet with businesses and investors to discuss opportunities for growth on both sides of the Atlantic, her government said.

“Together we can build on our credentials as two great innovating nations, and take this opportunity to shape the future of digital trade,” Truss said in a statement.

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826

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