08 March 2017

The Guardian: US businesses warn the UK over loss of access to EU single market

The study commissioned by the American Chamber of Commerce to the EU (AmCham EU) has called for Britain to recognise the limitations of any free trade deal with the US alone, and warns of the dangers posed in building barriers to trade between the UK and the wider continent.

It says the importance of the European market to US firms in Britain means that “both the US and the UK have more to gain from achieving some agreement with the EU than simply with each other”. The report suggested the record £487bn US firms invested in the UK in 2015 had been imperilled by the UK government’s intention to withdraw from the single market.

“The United Kingdom is a critical economic partner for the United States, and the US should ensure that bilateral ties are strengthened, rather than disrupted, by Brexit,” the organisation representing American businesses in Europe says.

“But America’s significant commercial and financial presence in the UK has been premised in large part on UK membership in the European Union – the largest, wealthiest and most important foreign market in the world to US companies.

“For decades, the UK has served as a strategic gateway to the European Union for US firms and financial institutions. The primary motivation of many US companies to invest in the UK has not been to serve only the UK market but to gain access to the much bigger EU single market.” [...]

However, the report for the AmCham EU, authored by the Centre for Transatlantic Relations, at Johns Hopkins says many US companies are based in the UK because of its role as “a gateway to the single market” and that during any trade negotiations with Donald Trump’s administration, the Americans will want to know “how open, wide and strong that gateway will be after Brexit”. [...]

The report highlights the importance to US banks of access to the European market through so-called passporting rights, and warns of the consequences if the UK is unable to negotiate similar access for companies based in the UK. “Many of these US firms will probably choose another entry point to access the single market in the future,” the reports says. [...]

Full article on The Guardian

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