The international trade secretary, Liam Fox, has flown 290,000 miles – slightly further than a trip to the moon – to meet politicians and business leaders in countries where he hopes free-trade deals can be struck after Brexit, according to a Guardian analysis.
Ahead of a key speech outlining the government’s post-Brexit plans for trade with the rest of the world, the Guardian analysis shows Fox has travelled to almost 40 different countries since taking over at the Department for International Trade in July 2016.
Some places on the list stretching across every inhabited continent on the planet include nations where trade is slight, such as Vietnam, Panama and Uganda. But he has also visited several major trading partners such as the US, Germany and the Netherlands. Britain has a trading relationship with the other 27 nations of the EU worth £553.8bn, easily dwarfing trade with the US, which is the country’s single-biggest trade partner with imports and exports worth £165.9bn.
Fox will attempt on Tuesday to outline the Conservatives’ Brexit plan, having so far balked at the UK staying part of the EU customs union and single market, in favour of comprehensive free-trade deal and striking trade deals with the rest of the world without having to bargain alongside Brussels. Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn backed striking a new customs union deal with the EU on Monday.
Brexiters have been accused of fantastical thinking by their political opponents and leading economists over their ambition for striking trade deals with Commonwealth nations and the rest of the world after Brexit. Although countries such as China and India are growing rapidly, most economists view the scale of the EU trade relationship as being too significant to put at risk.
Richard Partington and Angela Monaghan
UK trade with the world
The trade secretary’s vision for the future of British trade is for a lesser reliance on Europe and a greater focus on dynamic economies in the Commonwealth and the developing world. But he knows that currently the UK’s single biggest trading partner is the EU. Even breaking it down, trade with Germany is currently twice that with China.
