Dominic Grieve: A post-Brexit trade deal with the US is a "pipe dream"

1 February 2020, 09:00 | Updated: 1 February 2020, 09:03

The former MP thinks securing a trade deal with the US will be "immensely difficult".

Ian Payne asked Remainer Dominic Grieve if we'd get a trade deal done by the end of this year,

Grieve replied: "I think it's going to be very difficult to get a comprehensive deal by the end of the year and on the basis of the Prime Minister's timetable, and the fact that there is a June deadline about extension, and the limited negotiating time which is really between the start of next month and the end of July.

"I would have thought myself it was very ambitious. It may well be that we end up with a series of temporary deals at the end of the year rather than the final deal.

"I think, myself, that this story about the negotiation of our future relationship with the EU is going to go on for a long time."

Ian Payne then asked him about US trade deals.

Grieve said: "I think it's a pipe dream. I think that achieving a free trade agreement with the United States is going to be immensely difficult and if we succeed in getting terms for a free trade agreement, I think many people in this country will be very uncomfortable with, funnily enough, the loss of sovereignty which it involves.

"You see, ultimately, every free trade agreement involves a degree of loss of sovereignty. The EU isn't exceptional in that respect.

"It's just that because it was such a deep relationship and so comprehensive in terms of delivering the single market which, of course, Mrs. Thatcher promoted, it involved a sharing of sovereignty on the scale was rather different from our other relationships.

"But the truth is we're signed up to about 13,000, I think over 13,000 international treaties, all of which in one way or another limit sovereignty or we limit our sovereignty voluntarily.

"A free trade agreement with the United States will be a very big agreement indeed. So I think I think we will find it quite challenging."