“There are massive opportunities for UK companies to open up, to prise open the American market,” Johnson said.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. (File Photo: IANS)
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Saturday that the US must lift restrictions on UK businesses if it wants a trade deal with the UK.
Johnson said that there were “very considerable barriers in the US to British businesses” while travelling to the G7 summit in France, the BBC reported.
Johnson said that he had already spoken to US President Donald Trump about his concerns.
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He will also hold talks with EU Council President Donald Tusk.
“There are massive opportunities for UK companies to open up, to prise open the American market,” Johnson said.
“We intend to seize those opportunities but they are going to require our American friends to compromise and to open up their approach because currently there are too many restrictions.”
Last month, President Trump said talks about a “very substantial” trade deal with the UK were already underway.
He said a bilateral post-Brexit deal could lead to a “three to four, five times” increase in current trade – but provided no details about how that would be achieved.
However, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said a UK-US trade deal would not get through Congress if Brexit undermined the Good Friday Agreement.
Pelosi said the UK’s exit from the EU could not be allowed to endanger the 1998 Irish peace deal, which the US helped facilitate.
Trade deals involve two or more countries agreeing to a set of terms by which they buy and sell goods and services from each other.
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