Donald Trump has called on Britain to go for a no-deal Brexit if it does not like the terms offered by the EU.
“If they don’t get what they want, I would walk away,” Trump told Britain’s Sunday Times ahead of his state visit to the U.K., which begins on Monday. “Yes, I would walk away. If you don’t get the deal you want, if you don’t get a fair deal, then you walk away.”
Trump also criticized the deal negotiated with the EU, particularly the post-Brexit transition period during which the U.K. would not be able to strike its own trade deals.
“One of the things that was, I think, very bad is to have this two-year moratorium on trade. That is terrible. That is a tremendous penalty,” he said. “We have the potential to be an incredible trade partner with the U.K. We’re doing relatively little compared to what we could be doing with U.K. … I think much bigger than European Union.”
Asked if a trade deal between the U.K. and U.S. could be reached this year, Trump said that “we could work on it much faster, we could work on it very, very quickly. There is tremendous potential with trade with the United States. They have never had a president like me that understands this. I would go all-out. It would be a great, a great advantage to [the] U.K. A tremendous advantage.”
The president also pushed for the U.K. to cast aside its financial obligations to the EU.
“If I were them, I wouldn’t pay 50 billion dollars,” he said, referring to the divorce bill.
The American leader also waded into Britain’s contentious domestic politics, saying the government was wrong not to get Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, a member of the European Parliament, involved in negotiations with the EU.