Donald Trump warned in an interview that Theresa Mays new Brexit strategy will “kill” any future trade deal with the U.S. once the U.K. leaves the EU.
“If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the U.K., so it will probably kill the deal,” Trump told the Suns Political Editor Tom Newton Dunn in an interview to be published late Thursday, according to a tweet from Dunn.
The U.S. president also claimed that May ignored his advice on Brexit negotiations, saying, “I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it, but she didnt listen to me.”
The interview comes on the same day Trump arrived in the U.K. for a visit, following a NATO summit in Brussels, during which he said the U.K. is taking a “different route” to Brexit and questioned if it is the EU departure that British people voted for.
Mays Brexit strategy led to the resignations of both her Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson earlier this week.
A long-awaited white paper published on Thursday outlining her vision for the U.K.s future relationship with the EU revealed that the U.K. will formally ask the EU for a post-Brexit “association agreement” including a “free-trade area” for goods, a looser arrangement for financial services, alongside a security partnership and continued membership of many EU agencies. The proposed relationship would require continued close cooperation with the EU, including “regular dialogue between U.K. and EU leaders.”
