Joe Biden won’t do a trade deal with Britain, says Liz Truss

The former British PM, whose weeks-old administration collapsed in turmoil in 2022, also served as trade secretary from 2019 to 2021.

Speaking Monday, she contrasted Biden’s attitude to a deal with his predecessor Donald Trump, who she’s rowing in behind in November’s U.S. presidential election. “I know President Trump wanted to do a trade deal,” Truss said. “The problem lay in Britain, so we need to fix that side as well.”

Negotiations on a U.S. trade deal with the U.K. started under Trump in May 2020, but no talks have taken place since October 2020. U.S. farming practices like chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-injected beef have long been controversial in the U.K. and proved a sticking point.

Truss said “apparatchiks” in the U.K. government “did not want to do a trade deal” with Trump at the time, and claimed a deal “would have happened … if it wasn’t for that resistance in Whitehall.”

But the ex-U.K. PM was more optimistic about a trade deal during a second Trump term, saying: “I think we are more likely to see a trade deal taking place.”

Biden’s administration shelved separated plans for a more limited, “foundational” trade agreement last December after Senate opposition and disagreements over the deal’s scope.

The former prime minister is in the U.S. promoting her book Ten Years to Save the West.