Chancellor Rachel Reeves insists she is “confident” the UK can secure a trade deal with the United States but will “only ever act” in the national interest in agreeing to one. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00It's clear that the United States do want to secure an economic agreement with the United Kingdom
00:06and we want to do likewise. That will be in our national interest and I will only sign a deal
00:13that is in our national interest and we continue to work to reduce those tariff barriers but also
00:19to go beyond that and to build on the national security partnership that exists between our
00:24countries into a new scientific enterprise, a technological partnership to support the jobs
00:31and the industries of the future in the United Kingdom. I'm not going to put a timeline on it
00:36but I am confident that we will be able to secure agreement but the most important thing is that
00:42people know that this government will only ever act in our national interest. It's what we did with
00:47British Steel. It's what we're doing with our announcement today to protect British high streets
00:53against low value imports and it's what we will do with any trade discussions whether those are
00:58with the US, the United, the European Union or indeed with fast-growing countries economies around
01:04the world like India. I believe in free trade but I also believe in fair trade. I do understand the
01:10concerns that the United States has about countries that run persistent large trade surpluses with the
01:16US but the UK is not one of those economies. We have balanced trade between our countries. That's the
01:22case that I will be arguing this week in Washington. We've already announced that we are asking businesses
01:31for what they want to see but I don't think escalation is the right approach. We want to bring down trade
01:38barriers not increase them. A trade war is in no one's interest.