Brexit Diaries 30: Trade wars in the age of Brexit

On the long shadow of Donald Trump, Brexit in cherry picking mode, the sinister absence of Boris, a trip to the North for Michel Barnier and another bit of nostalgia.

Donald Trump threw his long dark shadow over Theresa May and her Brexit speech on Friday. The president had just blithely announced a global trade war. In the meantime there has been the usual spiral of escalations and things have taken a turn to the worse.  Trump thinks that trade wars are easy to win and has widened the scope to German cars. Many of which are produced in the US, but details have never interested the president.  And all this landed the UK prime minister in the unenviable position of having to warn off Donald Trump.
Was not free trade, in the beginning, one of the main arguments for Brexit? Britain only needed to be free from the shackles of the EU in order to sign the most glorious trade deals – or so went the reasoning. And the first port of call would be the United States. According to a leaked government paper at least half of this Brexit bonus was supposed to come from a free trade agreement with the United States. As things stand, we wish the Brits the best of luck. 

Prime Minister May would like to pick the orchestra – and the music

Theresa May's speech and avenues of cherry trees
There had been enough leaks and briefings before the prime minister's final and conclusive speech on Brexit that expectations were not overly high. But maybe she would it least pull a small rabbit from her hat? Optimists were disappointed, however, because there was in the end neither a rabbit nor a hat.
Instead we got an avenue of cherry trees and the full run of Theresa May's Brexit slogans from "deep and special relationship” to "take back control" and "frictionless trade." Next was the list of items the British PM does not want after Brexit: No customs union, no single market, no hard border in Northern Ireland.