A wake-up call for liberal Brexiters by Simon Tilford
Brexiters assumed that Britain would face a benign international environment once freed from the EU. They took for granted that the UK would be able to rely on the key global public goods underwritten by the US: the global trading system, the international financial system and international security. They argued that Britain would be able to leave the EU, but take advantage of open markets elsewhere. Britain’s financial services industries would profit from being able to sell into USdominated global financial markets, unencumbered by EU regulation. And their implicit assumption was that the US would continue to provide the security umbrella that makes peace and prosperity possible. The election of Donald Trump has undermined the premises of their argument. Forging as close ties as possible with the EU has never been so important for the UK. There is a possibility that once in power Donald Trump will revert to a traditional Republican agenda of free-trade, and military and diplomatic intervention to address security problems. But this looks unlikely. Trump is no economic liberal and does not appear to understand how global institutions and norms crafted by the US serve its interests. He may only last one term in office but the UK cannot afford to assume that Trump’s presidency is just a temporary hiatus before normal service resumes. Britain cannot rely on the continued openness of the global trading system, because globalisation can only flourish with wholehearted US support. And that is, at the very least, now in doubt.
Some members of the British government have latched on to Trump’s assertion that the UK will be high up the list of countries with which the US will negotiate trade agreements. But a US-UK trade deal will not happen quickly. And it would have to be heavily skewed in favour of the US in order to make it past Congress. In return for a deal, the US would no doubt put the UK under heavy pressure to reform the drug procurement procedures of the National Health Service (NHS): the NHS, as the largest buyer of pharmaceuticals in Europe, essentially sets the prices for many other EU markets, and is thus resented by the US pharmaceutical industry, which sees these prices as unfairly low. The US would also put the UK under fierce pressure to fully open up its