(Washington) The United States and the United Kingdom managed to settle their dispute over steel and aluminum on Tuesday, but the Biden administration did not seem in a hurry to resume negotiations for a free trade desired by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Posted at 5:48 p.m.
Updated at 6:55 p.m.
US Trade Secretary Gina Raimondo and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced on Tuesday that they have reached an agreement with London to end the punitive tariffs on British steel and aluminum that were imposed in 2018 by the former President Donald Trump.
“This critical agreement will not only help ensure the long-term viability of our steel and aluminum industries, protect American jobs, but it will also lift retaliatory tariffs on more than 500 millions of US exports to the UK, including spirits, various agricultural products and consumer goods,” they commented in a joint statement.
“This is great news and a welcome boost for our steel and aluminum industries,” Boris Johnson tweeted.
Concretely, this new agreement will make it possible to import “historic and sustainable volumes of British steel and aluminum products without the application of the tariffs of section 232”, detailed the American officials.
“Across the United States, distillers are celebrating the end of this long pricing nightmare,” reacted the Distilled Spirits Council, the representative body of the American spirits industry.
American whiskey was thus subject to customs duties of 25% in the United Kingdom.
The announcement was made following a two-day visit to the United States by British Minister for International Trade Anne-Marie Trevelyan.
Americans and British announced in January the launch of negotiations to put an end to this dispute inherited from the Trump era and which has polluted relations between the two countries for nearly four years.
The UK was among many countries that were slapped with additional tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum in June 2018.
If the Biden administration had already reached agreements with the European Union in October, then with Japan in early February, a negotiated solution was long overdue for London.
This agreement will thus make it possible to improve relations between the two countries which had already settled, shortly after the arrival of Joe Biden at the White House, their other major dispute which concerned subsidies to aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan said she hopes this agreement will allow us to “move forward” and “focus on deepening our flourishing commercial relationship with the United States”.
However, it pales in comparison to the great free trade agreement that Boris Johnson wants.
The signing of a bilateral treaty with the United States was one of the priorities of the British after Brexit, effective since 1er January 2021.
But while the administration of Donald Trump (2017-2021) was willing to enter into a bilateral agreement with London and even conducted a series of negotiations, the Biden administration let the process die.
In addition, the United States has made a potential agreement conditional on strict compliance with the Northern Ireland peace agreement.
” Some time ”
Tuesday, M.me Trevelyan acknowledged that London had been seeking a deal with Washington for “some time” and added that his government was not giving up.
The British Minister underlined that the challenge was not only to eliminate customs duties, but also to “build a commercial relationship from 21and century between two great nations that have common values”.
For his part, M.me Tai called for getting “creative” on trade tools, hinting that a deal was not on the cards.
Earlier on Tuesday, Marjorie Chorlins, vice president for European affairs at the American Chamber of Commerce – the body that defends American businesses – had stressed that there was “a shared desire to find ways to improve the relationship “.
“I don’t think it will be through a free trade agreement, at least not anytime soon,” she said, however.
Mme Trevelyan and M.me Tai announced that they would continue their business dialogue “in April, in Scotland” this time.
“I don’t want to prejudge or predetermine […] where these dialogues will lead us”, nevertheless tempered Katherine Tai.