US, UK Could Negotiate FTA in a Year's Time, Former USTR Says

The U.S. and the UK could negotiate a new free trade agreement in the span of a year after the UK's exit from the EU, former U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said during a conference call held by Mayer Brown. But she cautioned that the “Brexit” might not be complete until 2021, three years longer than EU and UK officials have said they expect it to take. Certain things could bode well for prospects of a bilateral U.S.-UK trade deal or for UK trade deals with other nations, including the opportunity to reduce its external tariff to a rate lower than the EU common tariff and the UK’s lack of a major agriculture industry, which tends to snag most trade agreements, Schwab said. Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Alliance bloc, which consists of Peru, Mexico and Colombia alongside Chile, all have liberal free trade policies and could hook up with the UK through trade agreements, she said.

As the UK works to beef up its post-Brexit trade team, it has the opportunity to identify best practices of other countries’ trade regimes, and the U.S. negotiation model constituting civil society and security-cleared industry representatives could work in the UK, too, Schwab said. “I think one of the things for the UK is that undergoing this massive change and this massive overhaul that Brexit represents also enables [the UK government] to really step back and look at different models around the world and different countries that are doing things well, and saying, ‘What works? What are best practices? Who gets things done well?’ and ‘Let’s borrow those.’” Schwab was USTR from 2006 to 2009.