A US-UK trade deal may not happen until at least 2024, US sources have told The Telegraph, as Joe Biden prioritises his domestic agenda and the overriding foreign policy challenge of China.
The proposed UK-US Free Trade Agreement, which was approaching fruition at the end of Donald Trump’s administration, is on ice amid questions over when, or even if, it will be revived.
Potentially prohibitive stumbling blocks include Mr Biden’s focus on restoring the pandemic-ravaged US economy, a lack of enthusiasm for free trade deals in a Democrat-controlled Congress, and the all-consuming nature of China issues for US trade officials.
"It [a UK deal] is going to be some years at a minimum," said one former official in the US Trade Representatives Office [USTR], who has worked with Mr Biden’s nominee for Trade Representative, Katherine Tai. "You might not get to it in the first term. I predict they’ll do it, but there’s a material chance they don’t.
"It would be a mistake to assume this (the UK negotiations) continues. I’m sceptical they’re going to move forward from what I’ve seen and heard.”
A former senior USTR official, who worked with Mr Biden in the Obama administration, said: "I don’t see how it’s going to elbow out the other priorities. I don’t see the energy there for it. Smaller things can be done with the UK, but what I don’t see is an FTA that is really comprehensive."
Another former US trade official added: "They’re not going to pursue something that’s not essential to what he [Mr Biden] is doing. The UK has already asked us questions, what does this mean for us? I think there’s a chance it [a deal] doesn’t happen at all [under Biden]."
Boris vs Biden
The possibility of a quick deal this year is all but non-existent, former trade officials said. But the reasons are complex.
Under the US Constitution, Congress holds the power to lay tariffs.
Through a "fast track" process called Trade Promotion Authority [TPA] the executive branch can pursue trade agreements, subject to a set of goals and guidelines set by Congress. Resulting agreements then get a simple up or down vote.
The current incarnation of TPA, for all potential trade deals, runs out on July 1. Mr Biden would have to notify Congress of his intention to sign a UK deal well before that, in April.
Ms Tai, who has yet to be confirmed in her role by the Senate, essentially ruled that out last month.
In her only public comments ever on a US-UK deal, Ms Tai said she would want to review the two-and-half years of work, and five rounds of trade negotiations with the UK, conducted by her predecessor Robert Lighthizer.
A former official in Donald Trump’s White House told The Telegraph: "A lot of progress was made [under Trump]. They should be able to build on that and convert.
"But these things are really hard to close. A deal would be good for America and good for the UK but you need political buy-in to get it done.
"I’d say the earliest they get back to looking at this in earnest is not until the end of the year. It might go the entire [Biden] term. The focus is China."
Transatlantic trade partnerships in US
When TPA was last renewed in 2015 it took months of tortuous internal arguing before Congress passed it.
A former senior trade official, who worked in both Republican and Democrat administrations, said renewing TPA in Congress again now would be "excruciating".
The Biden administration may consider it not worth the expenditure of political time and capital, at least in the short term, he said.
Trade officials are resigned to not doing any deals at all in at least the first year of the administration.
The question for the UK is how much further those deals will be pushed down the road.
Once 2022 dawns the midterm elections will loom in November. Democrats face the possibility of losing both the House and Senate, and months of negotiations on trade are unlikely to be considered a valuable use of potentially limited time.
A subsequent Republican-controlled Congress might be more amenable in 2023 and 2024.
"It’s hard to predict who’s going to be in Congress in 2023 and what their priorities will be," said a former senior USTR official in the Obama administration.
He described how, in 2008, the Obama administration came in and took over various trade negotiations but did not complete any deals for three years, even with TPA powers.
Former officials who know Ms Tai, 46, described her as someone with formidable "in the weeds" knowledge of both trade and Congress, and as a pragmatist.
"Katherine brings a lot of strengths," said one. "Specifically, she really knows China inside out. She speaks Mandarin."
However, as a deal negotiator she is less experienced, and considered less aggressive, than Mr Lighthizer.
A former US trade official said, in the short term, the UK should focus on working with the US on trade-related climate change issues, including carbon border adjustment taxes.
Last week, the USTR released its new 308-page trade agenda, detailing Mr Biden’s new "worker-centered" trade policy.
In addition to boosting domestic workers it will encourage US partners to increase union power and reduce wage gaps.
Boris Johnson speaks to Joe Biden after he was elected president
It listed four potential trade deals where negotiations had begun. The UK was positioned last behind the EU, Japan and Kenya.
A US-UK deal also faces resistance from some Democrats in Congress.
This week, Brendan Boyle, a Democrat congressman and ally of Mr Biden, accused the British government of showing "wanton disregard" for international law in Northern Ireland.
Mr Boyle sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has responsibility for trade deals.
He said: "Certainly the continued provocations around the Northern Ireland Protocol, obviously make it very difficult to commence a US-UK trade deal."
Once the US has moved beyond the pandemic, and its economy is booming again, the Biden administration may renew interest in a UK deal.
However, familiar thorny issues such as chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef would remain.
The poultry problem may prove more difficult to solve under Mr Biden than Mr Trump, as the current president’s home state of Delaware has a powerful chicken farming lobby.
In 2017 Nick Clegg predicted that could prove an issue, recalling a conversation he had with Mr Biden.
Mr Clegg said: "He [Mr Biden] said to me very unsentimentally, in that folksy way he does, ‘We are not going to sign anything that the chicken farmers of Delaware don’t like!’
"Now, the chicken farmers of Delaware wash their chicken flesh with some sort of chlorine."
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