Press

"The likeliest outcome remains a president's government of national unity to govern for six months to a year while the politicians gear up for a new election," said Luigi Scazzieri, the Italian specialist at the Centre for European Reform think-tank.

Sam Lowe, a trade expert at the Centre for European Reform think tank, agreed, arguing that convergence in those areas made “doing a deal with the US incredibly difficult, as the majority of their aggressive objectives involve removing regulatory barriers to trade, especially when it comes to food standards”.He added that it would make sense for the UK to keep its focus on European links. “I’d question the logic of running into a trade deal with a president who sees trade less as a means of achieving mutual prosperity and more an instrument of war.”

“In the end, most FTA partners will continue to grant preferential treatment to UK exports throughout the transition, but we might need to buy some of them off,” said Sam Lowe, international trade expert with the Centre for European Reform think-tank.
“This is their period of maximum leverage vis-à-vis the UK, so it would be negligent for them not to at least try and get guaranteed concessions, to come into effect once the arrangement has been replaced post-transition, from the UK.”

Sam Lowe, a trade policy analyst at the Centre for European Reform, says that mutual recognition to the extent Mrs May intends "only exists in two places - the EU and a Australia-New Zealand Trans-Tasman agreement". He points that both these arrangements come with "shared political institutions, shared agencies, and ended up moving towards harmonisation".

The results aren't surprising, says Sophia Besch, a research fellow and European defense expert at the Centre for European Reform think-tank. "It's down to the unpopularity in Germany of the current (US) president."