It’s a deal. The words sound good. Most human beings are primed to think of a deal as desirable in itself. It isn’t hard to see why. Agreement is generally better than disagreement. In most aspects of life, shaking hands under shared rules makes sense. So it takes a bit of effort to think more objectively. But it is important to do that now, especially in the case of the proposed UK trade deal with the United States.
Even before Donald Trump became president again, and long before the US started its current tariff wars, there were already plenty of reasons for caution about what a free trade deal with the US might look like. In the wake of Brexit, these concerns centred on whether a deal could be struck – and sold at home – on bilateral trade issues such as pharmaceuticals, food products and digital regulation, on all of which very different standards and assumptions have long applied on the two sides of the Atlantic.
