Asian stocks rise as markets shrug off new US levies
Heidi Alexander, the UK transport secretary, said the priority of the UK government is to get the trade deal with the US implemented, but did not say when the deal will be finalised.
Speaking on BBC radio 4’s Today programme she said:
We were the first country in the world to do a trade deal with the US which is really good news, and as a result of that it led to the president of the US exempting the UK from that 50% tariff that he is imposing on metals from other countries being imported into the US. What we need to do as a government is get that trade deal implemented and we will be bringing forward the legislation to parliament to ensure that that happens.
My colleague Jonathan Reynolds was in Paris yesterday and he met with his US counterpart to discuss progress with implementing the trade deal that he agreed as is normal with trade deals such as this, you agree the headlines and then you work through the details, that is work that is still ongoing, but of course we need to do the work domestically within the UK to ensure that that trade deal can be implemented.
I know that business owners will want to know that we are doing absolutely everything that we can to protect them from these very challenging global economic headwinds. We are.”
We have gone through the process of doing the reset with the EU which is going to provide a lot of reassurance to people that are exporting food and drink.
