‘Real appetite to work with the UK’: Cleverly adamant world ‘desperate’ to ‘do business’

James Cleverly: Foreign Secretary talks global trade deals

James Cleverly has said global forces are “really desperate” to do business with the UK as he looks to settle nerves that there is a lack of investment from abroad. The foreign secretary said, having just come back from a trip to Asia, the likes of Japan, Korea and Singapore were all keen to do business with the UK on issues such as “green energy generation” and “defence and security cooperation”. He also claimed that while a “federal-level trade deal” with the US would be “complicated”, trade relations with the superpower were improving in specific areas such as steel and beef. 

Mr Cleverly said: “The trip I have just come back from – I was in Japan, the Republic of Korea, I was in Singapore – they are really desperate to do business with us. 

“They wanted to invest with us in things like green energy generation, in helping countries skip coal power and move straight to renewables. [There is also] defence and security cooperation. 

“There is a real appetite to work with the UK and these are countries right on the other side of the planet. 

“And I tell you, the same is true in the Americas, in Africa, across Europe, in the ASEAN region, southeast Asia.”

James Cleverly said the world was “desperate” to do business with the UK (Image: SKY NEWS )

Liz Truss suggested a deal with the US was not possible “in the short or medium term” (Image: GETTY )

Ms Burley said: “Surely not the United States of America?” to which Mr Cleverly responded: “No, the US are very keen to continue working with us.”

Ms Burley added: “Not keen on a trade deal, though, are they?”

Mr Cleverly said: “Well, you have got to remember that America is a very big and complex political environment and that individual states have a lot of autonomy. 

“So, doing an overall federal-level trade deal with America is always going to be complicated but we are improving trade relations on things like steel, aluminium, whiskey, beef, loads of things.” 

Since leaving the European Union, the UK has signed trade deals and agreements in principle with 71 countries and one with the EU. 

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South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin (R) and James Cleverly meet in Seoul (Image: GETTY )

Business expert John Longworth praises post-Brexit trade deals (Image: SKY NEWS )

Britain is looking to fill the trading gap left by exiting the Union but commentators have had mixed reactions in evaluating how successful the governments have been in achieving that. 

While a significant number of deals or draft agreements have been made, the majority are “rollovers”, which means they are continuations of deals held by the UK prior to Brexit. 

But the chairman of the Independent Business Network John Longworth asked which trade deals were better than what the UK had had with the EU, said he believed we had improved our trading partners because post-Brexit we were “defending and promoting our interests”. 

He said: “We have had superior trade deals with Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, to name just a few, that are better than what we had with the EU. So, we are actually doing just as well because we are defending and promoting our own interests.” 

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US President Joe Biden has played down the chances of an imminent UK-US trade deal (Image: getty )

A trade deal with the US, however, looks less likely, with Prime Minister Liz Truss admitting earlier in her tenure at No 10 that she did not expect any negotiations to begin “in the short to medium term”. 

US President Joe Biden has also played down the chances of an imminent UK-US trade deal. 

But the US is a significant trading partner with the UK irrespective of a deal, accounting for 16.6 percent of total UK trade. 

As mentioned by James Cleverly, some further deals have been made following Brexit, including lifting the ban on the export of British beef across the Atlantic. 

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