UK plays down Brexit link in US steel tariff row

Read Time:1 Minute, 58 Second

She said wrangles with Brussels over the Irish border were”entirely separate”from trade with Washington.

It comes after the Financial Times reported the issue was stopping the UK resolving the sword row with America.
The US lifted tariffs on EU sword last month but kept them on UK sword.

Speaking in the Commons, Ms Mordaunt said the FT’s report”might be true in terms of how some people in the US feel, but it’s a false narrative. These are two entirely separate issues.”
“We do not do ourselves any favours if we immortalize these false narratives,”she added.

The Trump- period tariffs of 25 on sword products and 10 on aluminium were assessed on the EU in 2018, when the UK was still part of the trading bloc.

The US agreed to end the duties on EU products in the afterlife, but the tariffs, which nearly halved UK sword exports to its second largest request, remain in place on British sword.

The FT reported that US and UK addresses to resolve the issue couldn’t move ahead due to Washington’s enterprises over UK pitfalls to spark Composition 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The protocol is a clause in the Brexit deal that leaves Northern Ireland in the EU’s single request for goods, while checks are assessed between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The idea was to help a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which numerous stressed would would have destabilised the Good Friday Agreement peace deal.

But it has increased red vid on trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, and, according to unionist leaders, sparked rioting and violence this time in Belfast.

Downing Street has hovered to spark Composition 16 to stamp the protocol- commodity Washington has advised against.

Kim Darroch, a former minister to the US, said the reports on the” worried state”of trade relations between the UK and the US are” evidence that the US will act to cover a peace they helped broker”in Northern Ireland.

He added that the UK was”not going to have a thriving trade relationship with our biggest trading mate”-the EU, nor a free trade agreement with the US,”until the government stops hanging to walk down from an transnational agreement (on Northern Ireland) they negotiated and accredited only a many months ago”.