US punts UK trade calls to June as Biden, Sunak to talk Ukraine

The Biden administration deflected British calls for a resumption of trade talks, saying such discussions might next come up in June at a planned meeting with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

US President Joe Biden, who’s in Northern Ireland to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday peace agreement, will instead discuss peace and investment in the region and efforts to support Ukraine with Sunak, Amanda Sloat, the National Security Council’s senior director for Europe, told reporters in Belfast.

“I don’t anticipate that the two leaders are going to be talking about a free trade agreement on this trip,” Sloat said on Wednesday. “I expect the two leaders will have the opportunity to talk in more detail about economic issues when they have the opportunity for a longer conversation in June,” she said, referring to a planned trip by Sunak to Washington.

The UK has long touted a formal Free Trade Agreement with the US as a benefit of its departure from the European Union, but Biden’s administration has shown no interest in that, putting on ice discussions that had started under President Donald Trump. Sunak has pivoted instead to seek more narrow or sectoral pacts, though people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg last week that the premier still hoped to secure a trade deal in “all but name.”

Biden also intends to use his visit to mark the 1998 agreement that largely brought an end to decades of violence in Northern Ireland, and to advocate for the region to strengthen economic ties with the US, Sloat said. 

Nevertheless, the devolved Northern Ireland parliament set up by the peace agreement remains marred by gridlock, with the Democratic Unionist Party declining to join the power-sharing body because of disaffection with the terms of Brexit. 

Biden will meet with the leaders of the five main Northern Ireland parties on Tuesday, engagements that they said would be more than a greeting but stop short of a full conversation.

The president “would like to see the devolved institutions back up and running,” Sloat said. “But really the main purpose of his visit here today is to mark the anniversary.” 

Sloat deferred on a question of whether the US would favor amending the procedures to allow a non-sectarian party to participate in a power-sharing agreement. “That is ultimately going to be a decision for the people of Northern Ireland to make,” she said.