British Trade Secretary Meets With USTR, Other Washington Players

The British International Trade Secretary is meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, and what she called "leading Democrats," before heading to meet with California businesses and investors to round out the five-day trip. Secretary Liz Truss said she will speak with Tai on how the U.S. and the United Kingdom can cooperate more closely to "combat market-distorting trade practices such as industrial subsidies and dumping, as well as [pursue] working together to defend workers and companies that play by the rules against unfair practices in the global trading system, by combating forced labour and strengthening supply-chain resilience."

"Workers in both the UK and US have suffered when their products are unfairly undercut," she said in a statement. "We must work together with our friends and allies in the US to protect free enterprise from practices like industrial subsidies and intellectual property theft, which give trade a bad name."

Truss is pushing for a U.K.-U.S. free trade agreement, which she says could set high standards for digital trade.

On Twitter July 12, she said she met with an official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, arguing that the ban on British lamb exports should be lifted, and also talked about how to cooperate on climate. She tweeted, "I gave her British Stilton to celebrate the removal of 25% retaliatory tariffs!" She also tweeted a picture of her meeting with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, and said they talked about how the two countries can defend against unfair trading practices. Unions are the biggest supporters of the 25% tariffs on steel, and the U.K. and the European Union are hoping they can find a way to get those lifted by creating a cordon around cheap steel flooding in from China.