Truss: UK has no plans to ink trade agreement with US in coming years

Britain may not strike a free trade deal with the US for years, Liz Truss has admitted ahead of her first bilateral meeting with Joe Biden, Report informs referring to The Guardian.

The new prime minister conceded that talks were unlikely to start in the “medium term” as she traveled to New York on her first foreign trip since entering Downing Street.

In a move likely to disappoint Brexiters, she downplayed expectations that any trade agreement was imminent amid concerns that overpromising but then failing to get talks off the ground would damage her nascent administration.

On the plane to the US, Truss admitted to reporters: “There aren’t currently any negotiations taking place with the US and I don’t have any expectation that those are going to start in the short to medium term.”

Instead, the new prime minister said her priorities would be joining the trans-Pacific trading partnership of 11 countries, including Australia, Canada and Singapore, as well as striking deals with the Gulf States and India.

She added that her “number one” focus in talks with Biden at the UN on Wednesday would be global security, especially working with the US and European partners to deal with Russian aggression in Ukraine.