Section:GDN 1N PaGe:8 Edition Date:190801 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 31/7/2019 20:45 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian Thursday 1 August 2019
(^8) National
xSubjectxxxx
National
Politics
We will block any
trade deal if Brexit
risks Irish peace,
say US politicians
Julian Borger
Washington
Any future US-UK trade deal will
almost certainly be blocked by the
US Congress if Brexit aff ects the Irish
border and jeopardises peace in North-
ern Ireland, congressional leaders and
diplomats have warned.
Boris Johnson has presented a trade
deal with the US as a way of off setting
the economic costs of leaving the EU,
and Donald Trump has promised the
two countries could strike “a very sub-
stantial trade agreement” that would
increase trade “four or fi ve times”.
Trump, however, would not be able
to push an agreement through a hos-
tile Congress, where there would be
strong bipartisan opposition to any UK
trade deal in the event of a threat to
the 1998 Good Friday agreement, and
to the open border between Northern
Ireland and the Republic.
The comments came as Johnson
was in Northern Ireland in an eff ort
to revive power-sharing talks between
his allies in the Democratic Unionist
party and Sinn Féin , as well as to dis-
cuss Brexit preparations.
Johnson’s rise to power, and his
demand for the EU to drop the back-
stop , which is intended to safeguard
the open border after Brexit, has gal-
vanised Congress to make a stand in
defence of the landmark accord, to
which the US is guarantor.
“The American dimension to the
Good Friday agreement is indispensa-
ble,” said Richard Neal, co-chair of the
54-strong Friends of Ireland caucus in
Congress, and chair of the powerful
House ways and means committee,
with the power to hold up a trade deal
indefi nitely.
“We oversee all trade agreements
as part of our tax jurisdiction,” Neal, a
Democratic congressman from Mas-
sachusetts, said. He pointed out that
such a complex trade deal could take
four or fi ve years, even without the
Northern Ireland issue.
“I would have little enthusiasm for
entertaining a bilateral trade agree-
ment with the UK if they were to
jeopardise the agreement.”
Pete King, the Republican co-chair
of the Friends of Ireland group, said
the threat to abandon the backstop
and endanger the open border was a
“needless provocation”, adding that
his party would have no compunction
about defying Trump over the issue.
“I would think anyone who has a
strong belief in Northern Ireland and
the Good Friday agreement and the
open border would certainly be willing
to go against the president,” King said.
In the event of a hard Brexit, in the
absence of guarantees for the Northern
Ireland agreement, the strength of
sentiment among Irish-Americans –
one tenth of the population, many of
them in swing states – could make it
an issue in next year’s presidential and
congressional elections.
Johnson has refused to meet EU
leaders until the backstop is scrapped.
On Tuesday, Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo
Varadkar, told him the backstop
could not be removed from the UK
withdrawal agreement. After a con-
tentious phone call between the two
leaders, a spokesman for Varadkar said
that alternatives to the backstop as a
means of guaranteeing the Northern
Irish peace agreement “have yet to be
identifi ed and demonstrated”.
For the past eight months, Congress
has held up ratifi cation of a trade agree-
ment with Mexico and Canada, the
USMCA , which Trump has presented
as an extraordinary achievement. King
said a UK trade deal would face even
greater obstacles.
“First of all trade deals are always
diffi cult,” the New York Republican
said. “There’s any number of other
labour and environmental issues that
get brought up. But to have a solid
block on one particular issue would
make it very, very diffi cult to get it
through Congress, unless the border
issue is resolved.”
The Democratic speaker of the
House of Representatives, Nancy
Pelosi, has said that a US-UK trade deal
has “ no chance whatsoever ” of passing
in Congress. Over the weekend, a com-
mittee of former members of Congress
and foreign policy offi cials said “all of
Irish America will support the Speaker
right down the line”.
The ad hoc committee to protect
the Good Friday agreement, estab-
lished earlier this year, wrote to the
UK’s new Northern Ireland secret ary,
Julian Smith, on Sunday to raise its
concerns about Johnson’s statements
about abandoning the backstop.
Journal Martin Kettle Page^1
Journal Guy Verhofstadt Page 5
Sinn Féin
warns
Johnson:
change is
in the air
Peter Walker and Jessica Elgot
It would be “unthinkable” if a poll on
Irish reunifi cation did not follow a no-
deal Brexit , the leader of Sinn Féin has
warned Boris Johnson, also telling the
prime minister no one believed he was
impartial on Northern Ireland.
“In the longer term, we have advised
him that constitutional change is in
the air. He can’t say that he hasn’t
been told,” Mary Lou McDonald said
after meeting Johnson at Stormont
yesterday.
Any Brexit, but particularly no deal,
“represents in anybody’s language a
dramatic change of circumstances
on this island, and ... it would be
unthinkable in those circumstances
that people would not to be given the
opportunity to decide on our future
together”, McDonald said.
Johnson held bilateral meetings
with the fi ve main parties at Stormont
yesterday, ostensibly about deadlock
in the latest talks process. Northern
Ireland’s devolved assembly and
executive have been suspended since
January 2017.
After the meetings the DUP leader,
Arlene Foster, said Johnson had
dismissed the idea of a reunifi cation
vote, adding: “Talk of a border poll,
he told us, was not something that he
was entertaining.”
Nichola Mallon , deputy leader of
the more moderate nationalist SDLP,
said Johnson delivered only “bluff
and bluster around Brexit”. She said:
“We went into this meeting concerned
▲ The infl uential congressman
Richard Neal said upholding the Good
Friday agreement was a priority
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