Acouple of months ago, Barack Obama jumped into the EU referendum debate by suggesting that the UK would be at the “back of the queue” if it tried to cut a trade deal with America once it had left the EU.
The US president’s statement infuriated many Brexiters. After all, they argued, one of the benefits of leaving the EU is that an independent UK should be able cut its own deals swiftly, without the Brussels bureaucracy. And America seemed an obvious place to start. After all, it is already the UK’s biggest export destination, a market worth $60bn.
But it turns out the Brexiters might have been foolish to brush off the warning. Washington has been trying to pedal back from the “back of the queue” comment, not least because it has sparked criticism from some Republicans. “If we have a trade deal with others, we should have a deal with Britain, our ancestral ally,” Tom Cotton, a Republican senator for Arkansas, told the Aspen Ideas Festival last week.