Among the announcements following the Starmer-Trump meeting was a Trump Statement that a US-UK Trade Deal could be reached ‘very quickly’. Almost as if there was such a deal drafted and ready to go.
As it happens, there is: it is called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). This was under negotiation between the US and the EU until 2016. It was championed by Cameron and supported by all major political parties. However negotiations were stalled by public opposition in the rest of the EU in, and after the UK referendum on EU membership negotiations were paused, before being formally declared ‘obsolete and no longer relevant’ by the EU in 2019
The US-EU TTIP was controversial for a number of reasons. The most fundamental was the provision for meta-national tribunals whereby investor-companies could take sovereign Governments to court for restraint of trade. It is normal for contracts to specify the legal jurisdiction under which the contract is made, this becomes of crucial importance for international contracts.
Meta-national tribunals empower investor companies to sue ostensibly sovereign Governments over legislation which harms their business interests. A US-owned Water Company in the UK could sue for loss of profits if a future UK Government renationalised the water industry. This is not hypothetical, such procedures have been tested against developing countries attempting to exert popular control over natural resources.
The jewel in the crown for a resurrected TTIP deal with the UK is the NHS. Under TIPP US ownership of NHS components could not be reversed. Also ‘Big Pharma’ has always hated the power of the NHS purchasing function which is big enough to play one supplier off against another. Their preference is for smaller purchasing units which lack the monopsony power of the NHS and can therefore be dominated. Pressure would also be brought to bear on the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) to approve profitable but sub-optimal medications.
Other areas would also be vulnerable: privacy controls on personal data will be relaxed (hello Elon!) US Food Standards would will be lower to comply with US ones. (From Coronation Chicken to chlorinated chicken: the decline of the UK is a single trope).
There may even be some conformity of banking and financial standards. Although the US regulators have hitherto taken a dim view of the City of London’s ability to hide fortunes of doubtful provenance, these are different days.
TTIP negotiations were previously a long-drawn out process allowing time and space to organise protests which eventually led to its abandonment. The real and present danger is that it is signed, sealed and delivered before there is a serious discussion of the implications. We are sleepwalking into a dystopian nightmare.
None of this is certain to happen, but this is where negotiations with the EU were at before their abandonment. If a Trade Deal is to be concluded ‘quickly,’ then it will not look much different to where TTIP left off. Indeed, as most of the opposition to TTIP came from mainland EU, we are starting from well behind, and may be too far behind already to win.