‘Desperate’ UK has ‘no leverage’ for US trade deal

The UK is too desperate to secure a trade deal with the US, according to Bill Clinton's treasury secretary.

As Dominic Raab, the new foreign secretary, heads to the US to explore the potential for an agreement, Larry Summers said the UK was in a weak position when it came to negotiating with trade partners.

Summers said: “Britain has no leverage, Britain is desperate… it needs an agreement very soon. When you have a desperate partner, that’s when you strike the hardest bargain.”

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He said: “We have economic conflict with China and, even on top of that, the deterioration of the pound is going to further complicate the negotiating picture.

“We will see it as giving Britain an artificial comparative advantage and make us think about the need to retaliate against Britain, not to welcome Britain with new trade agreements.”

He concluded: “You make more concessions dealing with a wealthy man than you do dealing with a poor man.”

However, the keen Brexiteer and former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, has dismissed the claims.

“This is a classic attempt by Larry Summers to use Brexit for domestic point-scoring,” he said.

“Forty-five Republican senators have signed a letter to the prime minister pledging to back a trade deal with Britain once we have left the EU. The president (Donald Trump) himself has expressed his enthusiasm for a UK-US deal.”

Meanwhile, one US senator has said Britain should be at the front of the queue for a trade deal with the US, in a statement that the Daily Express sees him “laugh off the Brexit scaremongering” of Summers.

“Many of my colleagues in the Congress would say that Great Britain should be in the front of the queue given everything our nations have gone through together,” said Tom Cotton.

“Obviously it wouldn’t be a matter of days or weeks for such negotiations, it might be months, but I would suspect it would be months not years.”