Barack Obama: post-Brexit trade deal with UK could take 10 years

President says Britain would not get preferential treatment over the EU when it comes to negotiating new terms with US



It could take Britain 10 years to negotiate a trade deal with the US if it votes to leave the EU, Barack Obama has said.

Speaking to the BBC at the end of his final visit to the UK as president, Obama said: “It could be five years from now, 10 years from now before we’re actually able to get something done.”

Obama is in the last nine months of his presidential term and has spent the past three days in London as part of a state visit. During that time he urged Britons to remain part of the EU as they prepare to vote on membership of the 28-country bloc at the 23 June referendum.

Obama told the BBC that Britain would not get preferential treatment over the EU when it came to negotiating a new trade deal. He said: “The UK would not be able to negotiate something with the United States faster than the EU. We wouldn’t abandon our efforts to negotiate a trade deal with our largest trading partner, the European market.”

Published By - Theguardian.com - Sports New, LifeStyle News, Politics news, UK and world political comment and analysis: Sunday 24 April 2016 11.44 BST

Hillary Clinton urges Britain to remain in the European Union

US presidential hopeful weighs in on forthcoming vote as No 10 welcomes latest backing ahead of 23 June referendum

Hillary Clinton has thrown her weight behind the campaign to keep Britain inside the European Union in a major new boost to David Cameron’s hopes of winning a Remain vote on 23 June.

After Barack Obama used his farewell trip to the UK as president to make the economic and security arguments for membership, Clinton, who is the favourite to win the Democratic nomination in July and become the first female US president, makes clear that if she enters the White House she will want the UK to be fully engaged, and leading the debate, within the EU.

In a statement to the Observer, her senior policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, said: “Hillary Clinton believes that transatlantic cooperation is essential, and that cooperation is strongest when Europe is united. She has always valued a strong United Kingdom in a strong EU. And she values a strong British voice in the EU.” Sources close to the former secretary of state’s campaign said she stood fully behind Obama’s opposition to Brexit, which the president said on Friday would not only undermine the international institutions, including the EU, that had bound nations closer together since 1945, but would also mean the UK being at “the back of the queue” when negotiating new trade deals.

Toby Helm and Daniel Boffey

Published By - Theguardian.com - Sports New, LifeStyle News, Politics news, UK and world political comment and analysis: Saturday 23 April 2016 21.00 BST

Eurosceptics pour scorn on Obama's warning against Brexit

Senior Tories condemn ‘lame duck’ US president after he said an independent UK would be at back of trade deal queue

Senior Eurosceptic Conservatives have dismissed Barack Obama’s suggestion that the UK would be “at the back of the queue” in negotiations for a US trade agreement if it left the European Union.

Cabinet ministers accused the “lame duck” US president of making meaningless threats to blackmail the British people into voting to remain in Europe. Others pointed out that Europe and the US had never struck a free trade agreement anyway, and claimed Obama was being manipulated by Downing Street.

Chris Grayling, the leader of the House of Commons, said: “We should not give up our independence just because of what President Obama said.”

The intervention by Obama, who is popular in Britain, delighted the remain camp, but has left the leave campaign furious. “Barack Obama was doing an old friend a political favour,” said the justice minister Dominic Raab, referring to David Cameron.

Published By - Theguardian.com - Sports New, LifeStyle News, Politics news, UK and world political comment and analysis: Saturday 23 April 2016 10.54 BST

Barack Obama: Brexit would put UK 'back of the queue' for trade talks

US president, visiting London, says ‘part of being friends is being honest’ as he lays out perils of leave vote in EU referendum



Barack Obama has warned that the UK would be at the “back of the queue” in any trade deal with the US if the country chose to leave the EU, as he made an emotional plea to Britons to vote for staying in. The US president used a keenly awaited press conference with David Cameron, held at the Foreign Office, to explain why he had the “temerity to weigh in” over the high-stakes British question in an intervention that delighted remain campaigners.

Obama argued that he had a right to respond to the claims of Brexit campaigners that Britain would easily be able to negotiate a fresh trade deal with the US. “They are voicing an opinion about what the United States is going to do, I figured you might want to hear from the president of the United States what I think the United States is going to do.

“And on that matter, for example, I think it’s fair to say that maybe some point down the line there might be a UK-US trade agreement, but it’s not going to happen any time soon because our focus is in negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union, to get a trade agreement done”.

Published By - Theguardian.com - Sports New, LifeStyle News, Politics news, UK and world political comment and analysis: Friday 22 April 2016 20.30 BST

Barack Obama to make long-awaited appeal for Britain to stay in EU

US president to visit UK amid growing confidence in Downing Street that the intellectual tide has turned away from Brexit

Barack Obama is expected to make a calm but emphatic call this week for the UK to remain inside the European Union, using his status as Britain’s firmest ally to counsel that the country’s prosperity and influence will be irreversibly diminished outside the EU. The US president will make his appeal, which the remain campaign are counting on to tip the balance decisively, both in a newspaper article and remarks at a Downing Street press conference on Friday afternoon.

The importance of the UK as a key figure inside the EU club will be symbolically underscored when Obama again meets David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Mario Renzi and François Hollande in Hanover, Germany, on Monday to discuss Syria, Libya and the consequent migration crisis. The implicit message is that the UK outside the EU would not have been invited to such a high-level transatlantic conclave.

Published By- Theguardian.com - LifeStyle News, Politics news, UK and world politicalcomment and analysis: Thursday 21 April 2016 07.00 BST