United Kingdom and USA flags over blue sky background.
UK International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan is meeting this week with her counterparts in Washington to help forge stronger trade ties across the Atlantic, focusing on agriculture and technology. Presumably, the UK team will be keen to explain the advantages of UK divergence from the EU.
But there is another series of meetings that I think could be at least as important: the UK Minister of State for Trade Penny Mordaunt and her counterparts will meet with leaders of five US states.
Mordaunt will be visiting California, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Oklahoma. She will meet with governors, local representatives, commissioners and business owners “to discuss priority areas for further cooperation, such as services, digital and agriculture.”
State leaders should seize this opportunity. Businesses across high-tech industries, manufacturing and retail are suffering supply chain shortages, inflation and tariffs. “Buy American” provisions are threatening further cost hikes for government projects. Getting to know more British buyers and sellers can only lead to more choice and more opportunity.
The UK is discovering its newfound freedom from some of the more restrictive EU rules and regulations, particularly in agriculture and data flows. This should be welcome news for US agriculture producers and businesses that for years have struggled against a myriad of technical barriers to agricultural trade and data localization requirements, as most recently described by the Office of the US Trade Representative.
Trade development is not new to states. Nearly all states have full-fledged trade development offices and are well-poised to help firms find new opportunities.
But this is about more than increasing US soybean exports. Closer trans-Atlantic ties could include greater use of each other’s professional workforce: engineers, lawyers, and health care workers, to name a few. The unemployment rate dropped 0.4 points last month to 4.2 percent, yet 5 million fewer people are in the US labor force today compared to pre-pandemic. Some may return, but many are taking early retirement. Wherever we can find the right people to fill these jobs for US businesses, we should welcome them.
A recent LinkedIn report on the US labor market shows the top 15 jobs in demand are also the areas with the greatest need. E-commerce workers, financial experts, health care support staff, business development and sales professionals, and digital marketing are just a few of the areas where existing US businesses need help. Some of those are the same occupations that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports as having a relatively large share of older workers.
Take a look across America. Hospitals need access to medical devices, personal protective equipment and more nurses — Indiana recently had to bring in the National Guard to support its hospitals. America’s elderly need more at-home health aides. Schools and universities need more teachers. Local governments and urban planners need access to raw materials, construction equipment, engineers and laborers. States should ramp up the pressure for immigration reform and the establishment of legal pipelines for foreign workers to jobs.
Instead, Washington trade policy is getting sucked into more special-interest protectionism — for example in steel, lumber, and solar panels — which raise raw material prices beyond even supply-chain shortages and inflation. “Buy American” might sound pleasing to the voter, but American companies need the freedom to source the goods that best meet their needs at globally competitive prices.
Washington seems to be heading in a different direction than the rest of the country. As Biden wants to grow the government, Americans are increasingly returning to a preference for a hands-off government approach. A recent Gallup poll shows that 52% of Americans think government is trying to do too much, up from 41% since last year.
If government must get involved, it should be to open opportunities for American businesses, not close them. Individual US states should take advantage of the UK delegation’s visit to identify new opportunities for both sides. More US-UK trade in agriculture, tech and even professional services will create opportunities for state constituents while strengthening their economic bases, even in the face of Washington intransigence.
