First thing I would do if I were her is deport those Salafi Mullahs. They are almost all on welfare. Then the imprisoned Muslims. Then the Muslims on welfare. Those actions would shut up the rest of them. Trump is very much an Anglophile and will deal with her.
Theresa May’s Delicate Mission to Washington
The prime minister needs Trump’s commitment not to pull the rug on the global rules-based trading system, Simon Nixon writes
By SIMON NIXON
Jan. 22, 2017 2:01 p.m. ET
When Theresa May visits President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Friday, she will engage in arguably the most sensitive trans-Atlantic diplomatic mission by a British prime minister since Winston Churchill met President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 to persuade the U.S. to join the U.K. in its lonely war against Germany.
Back then, President Roosevelt was sympathetic but felt unable to overcome strong domestic resistance from the America First movement championed by Charles Lindbergh and other noninterventionists. Now it is Mrs. May’s turn to try to persuade the U.S. to come to the aid of a British government that fears post-Brexit isolation in Europe. But this time, it is the U.S. president himself who has adopted the slogan of America First.
For Mrs. May, this visit is hugely important. Last week, she gave a landmark speech in which she acknowledged for the first time that she plans to lead the U.K. out of the European Union’s single market and customs union, raising the prospect of new barriers to trade emerging between the U.K. and EU, reversing 44 years of economic integration. Mrs. May hopes to soften the Brexit blow with a new comprehensive free-trade deal with the EU that will minimize cross-border trade frictions.
But she has also warned that if she can’t secure a satisfactory trade accord in two years, she will walk away from the European bloc without any negotiated agreement and can compensate for lost EU trade with new bilateral trade deals. Mr. Trump is crucial to Mrs. May’s bluff: she needs his support both to convince her European colleagues and reassure her domestic base that she does indeed have options.
Yet Mrs. May’s visit also carries risks. One problem is that she and Mr. Trump appear to have different views on globalization. Mr. Trump regards Brexit and his own election victory as twin manifestations of the same political phenomenon: populist uprisings by marginalized voters against globalization and out-of-touch elites.
Yet Mrs. May, who opposed Brexit in the referendum, has chosen to interpret Brexit differently, claiming it as a vote in favor of further globalization, with the U.K. cast as a global leader in free trade. Mrs. May envisages Britain at the heart of a revitalized global, rules-based trading system, rapidly agreeing on ambitious new trade deals with all the world’s major economic powers. That vision is potentially threatened by Mr. Trump’s protectionist instincts and his promise of a trade policy based on “buy American, hire American.”
That points to Mrs. May’s second problem: Although her threat to walk away from the EU without a deal was necessary for domestic political purposes, this threat in reality lacks credibility. As things stand, almost any deal is better for the U.K. than no deal. The U.K., with a budget deficit of 3.5% of gross domestic product, the second largest in the EU, is in a poor fiscal position to withstand the disruption of a sudden imposition of tariffs and customs checks. Nor is it in a position to turn itself into a Singaporean-style offshore tax haven without politically unpalatable welfare cuts.
What’s more, the U.K. faces formidable legal and bureaucratic challenges if it is to ready itself for a sudden shift to trading under World Trade Organization rules in two years’ time. If it quits the EU without a negotiated agreement, it would face years of litigation as it tried to untangle its relationship through the international courts. That in turn would complicate the U.K.’s efforts to establish its own tariff schedules at the WTO, the crucial first step toward establishing a basis for future free-trade deals, since these require recognition by all 163 WTO members.
The U.K. would also face a race to put in place the body of laws necessary to ensure that every sector—particularly those such as aviation, chemicals, medicines, food and data storage, which are currently regulated by European bodies—had a solid legal basis and the appropriate authorizations from internationally recognized agencies to continue trading after a chaotic Brexit in 2019.
When Mrs. May meets Mr. Trump, she will therefore be treading a fine line. If she is to make a success of Brexit as she has promised, she needs to ensure that the U.K. emerges from Brexit firmly embedded in a global rules-based trading system with the freest possible trading relationship with a strong and successful EU.
For that, she needs more than just the offer of a post-Brexit free trade deal from Mr. Trump, politically helpful as this would be. She also needs his commitment not to pull the rug on the global rules-based trading system, nor to undermine Europe’s unity or collective security. The worst-case scenario for Britain would be to find itself isolated in a crumbling world order disintegrating into protectionist blocks. In 1941, it took a major shock in the form of the attack on Pearl Harbor to bring U.S. public opinion around to Britain’s point of view. Mrs. May must hope that it won’t require a shock to convince Mr. Trump. |
