Corbyn vows to block ‘sweetheart’ trade deal between May, Trump

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn (Photo by AFP)

UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn says he will make sure that a “sweetheart” trade deal between British Prime Minister Theresa May and US President Donald Trump will never go through after the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU).

Speaking to Huffington Post on Wednesday, Corbyn said any trade deal like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) was not good for the UK because it was going to flood the markets with “cheap food.”

“Now I don’t want to get involved in every aspect of what is happening in US politics internally but what I do say is that we want a trade relationship with the rest of the world that is fair and just,” he said.

“We don’t want a sweetheart deal with Donald Trump that is going to look a lot like TTIP,” he added.

The Labour leader has long been pushing for maintaining the UK’s access to the EU Single Market, a special tariff-free zone that would be closed on the UK after Brexit.

May has made it clear that she would take the country out of the EU, even if she cannot reach a deal with the EU to address the issue.

Corbyn said at a rally in Stornoway later in the day that the UK could not turn its back on the European market.

“We are determined to secure tariff-free access to the European market and to carry on trading at the same level as we do now. We can’t do anything other than that,” he argued.

He accused British International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and the ruling Conservative Party of trying to get a trade deal with the US that would harm British values.

“What they are trying to do is a ‘sweetheart deal’ with the US, the equivalent to TTIP which will be damaging to labor standards in this country, will be damaging to environmental regulations and which will be damaging to the kind of society that we have,” he added.

In late July, Trump said in a tweet that he was working on a “major trade deal” with the UK.

Earlier that month, he met May on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, assuring her that “trade will be a very big factor” in their “special relationship.”


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