US presidential candidate Joe Biden has stressed the controversy over Britain's new Brexit bill and warned that it would affect the future UK-US trade agreement.
The Democratic challenger raised concerns
among senior US politicians that changes to the domestic market bill would
undermine the Good Friday agreement.
Mr. Biden tweeted: "We cannot allow
the Good Friday Agreement to allow peace in Northern Ireland to become a Brexit
accident."
"Any trade agreement between the
United States and the United Kingdom must be strong in order to respect the
agreement and prevent the return of the strict border."
The intervention comes after a strange day
of diplomacy in Washington DC for British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.
In his diary of his engagements in the US
capital, the trade agreement between Britain and the United States was
prominent, but Brexit was an international agreement and a matter of breaking
the law.
Her day started off very positively.
His host, Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of
State, called the "special relationship" "stronger than
ever" and said: "We have confidence in Britain, I'm sure they will
fix it."
Amidst the diplomatic warmth of the
morning audience at the State Department, they had welcoming words. An
afternoon cold presented the opposite.
The British Foreign Secretary attended a
scheduled meeting with Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of
Representatives, who was already on record as expressing her displeasure at the
UK's actions on Brexit, saying that it would hurt Britain and the United
States. A free trade agreement can be’ rejected.
His ideas are important. Democratic votes
would be needed’ to win any UK-US trade agreement through Congress.
Speaker Pelosi reiterated his warning to
Mr. Raab in a face-to-face meeting.
In a subsequent statement, he said:
"If the UK violates its international agreements and Brexit violates the
Good Friday Agreement, there is no definite possibility of a US-UK trade
agreement for Congress to approve. Will be."
It is clear that the American political
establishment has to read its own ceremonies and has other, influential voices
in its ears - at least not the Irish lobby in the United States.
In his State Department news conference, Mr.
Raab insisted that the threat to the Good Friday Agreement was posed’ by the
EU's "politicization" of the issue.
In a meeting with Speaker Pelosi, he tried
to reassure him that the British government would not undermine the Good Friday
Agreement and would never set up a strict border in Northern Ireland.
British officials said the solution was to
withdraw from the European Union, rather than in the United States.
However, their Brexit trip will soon bring
them across the Atlantic. How negotiations with the European Union will unfold
will dictate how hard they will be sold’ in the United States.
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