Kemi Badenoch has strongly hinted that the UK expects to sign a US trade deal if Donald Trump wins back the White House.
Previously the Business and Trade Secretary has hit out at Joe Biden for putting the talks on hold, with the US President known to be “anti-British” and an opponent of Brexit.
But pressed by Sky News this morning on whether she would welcome Mr Trump back to the White House, Ms Badenoch gave a strong hint that she expects it would result in a major UK/US trade deal which could be “four or five times bigger” than what exists now.
She told Sky’s Sir Trevor Phillips: “It is a shame that the US currently is not signing any free trade agreements with any country. We had gone quite a long way in terms of negotiating a UK/US free trade agreement.
“So we hope whoever it is who wins the US election – I have no idea who that will be – will be somebody who looks again at what we have done and hopefully we pick up where we left off.”
Earlier she schooled Phillips on the success of Brexit after he tried to trot out Remainer claims that it has been a failure.
Ms Badenoch pointed out that at each stage the UK has succeeded where Remainers said it would fail including immediately resigning the existing 73 agreement the UK had via the EU with other countries.
She noted: “People said we wouldn’t get any of those done and we would go backwards.”
She went on: “We are doing very well. There are some new ones like the Comprehensive Tras Pacific Partnership. CPTPP is huge. The Indo-Pacific is where the global growth is going to be coming from.
“European growth is shrinking and we are strengthening our links with those countries on the other side of the world.”
She added that the UK has now passed France in manufacturing and unlike the EU the economy is gowing.
Speaking later to Camilla Tominey on GB News, Ms Badenoch also defended the government’s record on Brexit.
She had clashed with Brexiteers over her handling of the Retained EU Law Bill to get rid of Brussels rules and regulations.
The senior minister said: “They [Brexiteers] just wanted a big bonfire.”
She argued that if an EU rule had been designed “so that children don’t choke” on a product “then I don’t want to scrap it.”
She added: “The reason we left the EU was so that we could pick or choose what we want to do and that is what I have done.”
Ms Badenoch insisted that abourt 2,000 EU rules out of around 5,000 have already been revoked or reformed.
And in a week where she had apparently clashed with Mr Sunak over a plan to not diverge from EU rules, she said: “What people need to understand is that there is a plan to take advantage of Brexit, that is what we are doing.
“Rishi’s got a plan. It is very clear. It is not going to be everything on day one but every day there will be something new we can find that we can make better. Most importantly ending the European Court of Justice. That has no oversight over us.”
