The US is seeking to develop trade links with the United Kingdom, senior official Ted McKinney has said. However, he was keen to emphasise that trade is a ‘‘two-way street’’ and expectations must be similar on both sides.

“We know the UK is a strong trade partner. But to be very clear, we’d like to enhance that. There might have been one time when I talked about exports as trade. But I say that from my heart and my head trade is a two-way street, it has to be going both ways,” McKinney said. “Exports do not equal trade. If you don’t win with trade, then what’s the purpose of the trade?”

The USDA Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs was speaking at the Oxford Farming Conference on Thursday morning.

McKinney claimed that the US is one of the most open countries in the world in which to do trade.

“Certainly, there are high standards and equivalencies that need to be reached. In the case of many of you, we’re working on that. But ‘no’ is not the normal answer from the US. If those high bars from animal welfare, and the environment and food safety orientations are met, welcome. We’re hoping for the same from you.”

The US official describes Brexit as a “wonderful movement” and welcomed DEFRA secretary Michael Gove’s speech which McKinney viewed as further progress.

I think we have an untold opportunity as a world to get this right with trade. But we have headwinds,” he said. “We are watching this wonderful movement you have with Brexit to see will the UK be the partner that we’d see or will there be roadblocks? I don’t know that the UK will have an opportunity again, at least not in the near future, to get right, whatever right means to you, the ideas of regulations like environmental care, animal welfare, proactivity, opportunities to export. We will not interfere in that process. If asked, we are happy to share with all of you how we do things. We’d love to do more trade.”

DEFRA secretary Michael Gove told the conference that the UK will not lower its food standards for the benefit of trade.

"It would be foolish for us to lower animal welfare or environmental standards in any trade deal, and in so doing undercut our own reputation for quality," he said. "We will succeed in the global market place because we are competing at the top of the value chain not trying to win a race to the bottom."

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