Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 9/6/22

Liz Truss will be officially sworn in today as the United Kingdom’s next prime minister after she defeated fellow Conservative Rishi Sunak on Monday.

Context: Truss, who served as foreign secretary for the outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson and was the country’s trade minister during the Trump presidency, was a strong proponent of a U.S.-U.K. free trade agreement. A comprehensive deal was highly sought after by the U.S. ag industry, but only incremental steps were achieved under Johnson.

A deal with the U.S. was seen as one of the key objectives of Brexit in 2016, which Truss initially opposed but later supported.
When Washington changed hands in 2021, a negotiation that was supported by former President Donald Trump and had a fast-track in Congress was scuttled as the Biden administration has remained averse to new trade agreements.

The outlook: POLITICO’s Ryan Heath and Ella Creamer report that Truss will likely face an uphill battle on a bilateral trade deal as long as Biden remains in the White House and steadfast in his resistance to new deals.

Truss will need Republican support to have any hope of completing a U.S.-U.K. trade deal under Biden. Even that might not be enough. “It will take a change in the White House to a pro-free trader president” for Truss to unlock a trade deal, said Luke Coffey, a former U.K. Defense Ministry and Conservative Party adviser now at the Hudson Institute.