Last week saw the signing of a couple of trade deals. The first, with India, is the culmination of several year’s work. The second, with the US, was cited by President Trump and Sir Keir Starmer as a truly historic moment, during a live televised conference call between the two. It is true. This was an historic moment. Never before has so much nonsense been spoken by two G7 world leaders in what was an unusually bizarre piece of political and diplomatic theatre.
Post Brexit, the UK and US entered into trade negotiations. Five or six big bilateral negotiations took place, with a couple of hundred negotiators on each side of the table gathering to argue their points. These negotiations were cancelled by President Biden, and that was the end of a UK / US comprehensive free trade agreement.
Free trade deals include a lot more than simple tariffs. They include recognition of things like qualifications – incredibly important for a service-based economy like ours. Food and animal standards – the argument around that chlorine washed chicken and hormone fed beef. And the US is complicated because a lot is done state-by-state, not federally.
These deals cover thousands of pages of details, not the five pages we saw last week. No, last week didn’t improve our trade relations – it simply made it less bad than it was the previous week, but still worse than it was before Trump’s recent imposing of punitive tariffs.
The India deal, however, is a bit more significant. This is the end of long-term negotiations, that were held up with arguments about reciprocal visa rights. The UK has a far richer economy than India’s and so there is a desire for Indian nationals to come and live here. With India the most populous country in the world, that means we need to be sure everyone visiting the UK will return, and that is why we held out on visa rights. But it seems the concession given is that Indian part time contractors coming to work, temporarily, for Indian companies in the UK will not be charged National Insurance.
A row has sprung up over this that this measure undercuts British workers. But to be fair, this is a common practice for all our trade deals so the intention is that it should not make too much difference.
But with 1.4 billion Indians, it may be that we see more of these temporary workers than would otherwise. Time will tell.
