economy, whilst the notion of a commercial El Dorado in the Indo-Pacific has been exposed as a pipedream. as “indispensable allies and pre-eminent partners.” Instead, Brexit has “thumped” the U.K. With the battle for the future increasingly fought in arenas like cyberspace, data, artificial intelligence and their regulation, the EU finds its strengths at a new premium.īy contrast, Global Britain was meant to be re-emerging as a great maritime trading power, shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S. and EU have recognized in each other an indispensable partner if the West is to hold its own against the totalitarians. Yet, despite the bloc’s unpreparedness to sign up for a new Cold War with China, the U.S. In the Brexit prospectus, the sclerotic EU should be fading into geostrategic irrelevance, if not actually breaking apart. This was not how the first year of Britain’s recovered sovereignty was meant to conclude. The other visitor was Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Britain’s new international trade secretary, with a narrower mission - an (unsuccessful) bid to get the Americans to remove tariffs on British steel and aluminum exports, as they had already agreed for the EU. President Joe Biden’s top economic team for wide-ranging discussions on digital issues - from regulation and security to competition, as well as meeting the Chinese technological challenge. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager met U.S.

In early December, a Tale of Two Visits played out in Washington. Nick Witney is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. *** The UK's global influence has taken a hit if Britain’s successful G7 and COP26 presidencies in 2021 are to evolve into a meaningful global role for Brexit Britain. The government will have to work cooperatively alongside the EU as well as the U.S. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threatening military build-up on the border with Ukraine since October has brutally reminded Boris Johnson that his global ambitions can only be exercised from a secure European base. security partnership confirmed for some Britain’s post-Brexit tilt to the Anglo-Saxon world as well as the Indo-Pacific. The shock announcement in September of the new Australia-U.K.-U.S. The second lesson of 2021 was geopolitical: Britain can leave the EU but not Europe. Economic disruption is likely to worsen in 2022.īut this is unlikely to lead to a political rupture between the U.K. And the EU has started demanding formal certification of the “origins” of tariff-free imports from the U.K. The U.K.’s new customs procedures finally came into force on January 1, 2022, and present new headaches for U.K. Importantly, 2021 has only been a taster for the border frictions contained in the thin U.K.-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

Openstreetmap looks to due to brexit