Now is the chance for America to strike free trade deal with Britain
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After two years of negotiations, Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled her Brexit plan to a chorus of boos from across the British political spectrum. For many of us, it was every bit as bad as we had feared, stripping the United Kingdom of its rights to pursue independent trade negotiations with other countries and binding us to the policies of the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels, with no right to even vote on what those policies are.

The shame for a sovereign nation and proud people was too much for some in her own cabinet, two of whom have resigned in protest. Parliament is balking, and it looks increasingly unlikely that this deal with survive a meaningful vote in the House of Commons. But a vote down in the House of Commons does not automatically mean there will be no deal with the European Union. It simply means that we will have the political space for a reset and a completely different approach to negotiations. Time is short, but our conversations with the European Commission suggest that building on their offer to Britain can lead to a comprehensive agreement, one that will leave Britain free to negotiate free trade deals with the rest of the world, including the United States.

Of course, if Brussels remains recalcitrant and we do leave the European Union with no deal, Britain will simply be faced with the same high tariffs and discriminatory trade barriers facing other nations doing business with the European Union. Either way, the enormous upside of a reset is that for the first time in a generation, Britain will be a free agent in the world again, retaining our full sovereign rights to pursue real and lasting free trade deals with whatever nation or nations we please.

First among those must be the United States. As leaders in the Brexit movement, we have come to the United States at this critical time to meet with government and industry leaders to urge rapid action on a bilateral free trade pact. The United States has already demonstrated its ability to supercharge the trade negotiation process, finalizing deals with Canada and Mexico in a matter of months. We can do the same with a free trade pact between Britain and the United States. While “official negotiations” between our nations cannot legally begin until our formal exit from the European Union, all the pieces can now be put into place so that a deal can be signed soon after.

Britain and the United States are in many ways ideal free trade partners. We share not just a common language, but common values of rule of law, free markets, and property rights, as well as a long history promoting free trade among nations. Our businesses each employ over one million citizens and we are each the largest source of foreign direct investment for each other. In fact, Great Britain is one of the few countries with which the United States now enjoys a trade surplus.

The only outstanding issues are in those areas where Britain is currently bound by its membership in the European Union trade bloc, with its many “precautionary” regulations against agriculture and other goods. All that will vanish once we make our exit, provided we do not of our own volition lock ourselves into the regulatory orbit of the European Union. Britain and the United States can start from an entirely clean slate, taking World Trade Organization rules of fairness and regulation based on science as our standard.

The first step of that process has already begun. The Trump administration last month notified Congress of its intent to begin trade negotiations with Britain, the European Union, and Japan. While there will be a natural tendency to concentrate efforts on the “bigger fish” of the European Union and Japan, those negotiations are bound to be extremely complex and will probably drag on for years.

No doubt the United States will find dealing with the European Union every bit as frustrating as we in Britain have found it, and that the United States in fact found it when trying to negotiate the original Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which fell apart over two years ago. In fact, European Union Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström has already started imposing impossible preconditions, warning President Trump that negotiations would grind to a halt if the United States insists that fair treatment of its agricultural goods remain on the table.

With Britain, there would be no such preconditions and no bullying on either side. We will have negotiations between two nations with a proud heritage of free trade and are not afraid to compete openly and fairly on a level playing field. We have the opportunity to demonstrate to the world what real free trade looks like. This is the type of trade President Trump has urged, based on zero tariffs and zero manipulations of regulations that give one side or the other an advantage. Once they are complete, the United States will find itself with a true partner in Britain as we confront together the unfair practices of the European Union, China, and other nations.

There is a battle for the global regulatory system of the world. Will it be one in favor of competition and innovation, or will it be in the European Union model of an increasingly prescriptive regulation? Brexit is a massive global event. A major G7 nation is adopting trade policy for the first time, and a potential ally for the United States in global regulatory battleground exists. The United States should seize this opportunity and not simply be a spectator.