The UK is set to reveal negotiating objectives for its trade talks with the US next week amid rising concerns over the National Health Services (NHS) and food standards, the Department for International Trade has said.
The document is expected to set out Britain’s “red lines” on some controversial issues, including whether to open NHS, the country’s publicly funded healthcare system, to US private companies, Xinhua news agency quoted the Department as saying on Saturday.
There were also rising concerns in the UK that the trade deal will lower barriers to controversial American exports such as chlorine-washed chicken, which was banned in the European Union (EU) in 1997 over food safety concerns but is considered “safe” in the US.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly expressed his ambition for a “massive” trade deal with the US.
Earlier this month, he criticized “America bashers” who take a “hysterical” attitude towards US food.
In 2019, Johnson said that the US must lift restrictions on UK businesses if it wants a trade deal with the UK.
Earlier, President Trump had said talks about a “very substantial” trade deal with the UK were already underway.
He said a bilateral post-Brexit deal could lead to a “three to four, five times” increase in current trade – but provided no details about how that would be achieved.
However, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said a UK-US trade deal would not get through Congress if Brexit undermined the Good Friday Agreement.
Pelosi said the UK’s exit from the EU could not be allowed to endanger the 1998 Irish peace deal, which the US helped facilitate.
Trade deals involve two or more countries agreeing to a set of terms by which they buy and sell goods and services from each other.