US businesses are not happy with the progress Brexit is making to complete the negotiations.
The Brexit team is taking its time to negotiate, whereas time is running out, which is upsetting the European Union.
American perspective is different from the British perspective as seen from the following statement:
“Brexit has caused a lot of uncertainty, a lot of confusion,” Emanuel Adam, director of trade and policy at British American Business, says. The transatlantic network, which represents more than 2,000 companies, asked its members if they thought Britain should leave the EU - 95% said no.
Fourteen months after the referendum, they are trying to adjust to an uncomfortable political reality.
Some of its American members have been working to anticipate the different types of Brexit and what they would mean. “That costs a lot of time and effort,” Adam adds. “That has, at least in certain cases, delayed investment decisions.”
Brexit is ambiguous. The UK could, as now weakened Prime Minister Theresa May still aims, leave the Single Market and the Customs Union and restart its trading relationship with the world. Or it could stay in both and remain party to EU deals.
Whether politicians are for or against Brexit, they have come to understand its success or failure by how fast the UK can agree trade deals once it leaves the EU.
Voices from the UK-US business community have told HuffPost UK Brexit’s threat to existing arrangements looms larger than any opportunity for better trading it might present. Adam says, despite potential advantages of a new US/UK deal after a Hard Brexit, BAB’s members “more and more” would prefer Britain remain in the Single Market and Customs Union.
He says: “If we could take out the uncertainty that’s being created by Brexit; especially when it comes to the future access to the Single Market and Customs Union, that would be the perfect scenario for US business. But we do acknowledge the political situation is currently different one.”
Baldev Sharma
Rayners Lane, Harrow
