Liz Truss abandons hopes of post-Brexit trade deal with the US in shock U-turn

Liz Truss has abandoned hopes of a trade deal with the US in a stunning post-Brexit U-turn.

Successive Conservative governments of which Ms Truss has been a key member have spent years targeting a transatlantic trade pact with America as the prize for quitting the EU.

But, in a shock admission, the new Prime Minister ditched plans for an agreement with the White House “in the short to medium term”.

The bombshell, which will rock Leave campaigners who claimed the UK could easily forge a multibillion-pound pact with the US, came as she prepared for a meeting with US President Joe Biden on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Speaking to journalists on board her Airbus A321-LR 35,000ft above the Atlantic on Monday night, former Foreign Secretary Ms Truss admitted she would instead prioritise joining the Comprehensive and Progressive agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Liz Truss speaking during the funeral of the Queen at Westminster Abbey (Getty Images)

That pact includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

She also wants trade deals with India and the Gulf Cooperation Council, which involves Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Revealing she was targeting “getting CTPPT accession, getting a trade deal with India, getting a trade deal with the GCC”, Ms Truss added: “Those are our trade priorities.

“There isn’t currently any negotiations taking place with the US and I don’t have an expectation that those are going to start in the short to medium term.”

Joe Biden pictured boarding Air Force One as he headed back to the US after the Queen's funeral (REUTERS)

The admission effectively shelves any plans for a trade deal for years - potentially more than a decade.

Ms Truss is understood to have decided to admit early in her premiership that a US trade agreement was off the table, believing it would not overshadow her talks in New York with the US President.

Instead, she wants to win his support for renegotiating the Northern Ireland Protocol - a key plank of the post-Brexit trade deal with the EU, which prevents a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic - the UK’s only land boundary with the bloc.