Britain PM Liz Truss doesn't expect U.K.-U.S. trade deal anytime soon

Liz Truss said she was more focussed on obtaining accession to the Trans-Pacific trade partnership and striking trade deals with India and the Gulf Cooperation Council of states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Prime Minister Liz Truss has kicked off her first visit to the United States as Britain’s leader with an admission that a U.K-U.S. free trade deal is not going to happen for years.

Ms. Truss said a trans-Atlantic deal is not one of her priorities — a sharp contrast with the stance of her immediate predecessors as Conservative Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and Theresa May. Both dangled the promise of a deal with the world’s biggest economy as one of the main prizes of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

“There [aren’t] currently any negotiations taking place with the U.S., and I don’t have an expectation that those are going to start in the short to medium term,” Ms. Truss told reporters aboard her plane to New York, where she landed on Tuesday to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

Ms. Truss said she was more focussed on obtaining accession to the Trans-Pacific trade partnership and striking trade deals with India and the Gulf Cooperation Council of states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar. “Those are our trade priorities,” she said.

Ms. Truss’s downbeat assessment about trans-Atlantic trade came ahead of her first one-on-one meeting with President Joe Biden since she took office two weeks ago. The two leaders are due to meet on Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. gathering in New York. Both were among scores of world leaders who attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in London on September 19.

Ms. Truss said her priorities for the meeting with Mr. Biden were “making sure that we are able to collectively deal (with) Russian aggression,” and ensuring “we are not strategically dependent on authoritarian regimes.”

“I want to work with our allies like the United States, like France, the EU, the Baltic States, Poland to take on the challenge we face from Russian aggression,” she said. “That should be our priority.”