Tensions trickle through the UK-US special relationship

It’s still only Thursday, but it’s been quite the week for the not-so-special relationship, with US president Joe Biden given a noticeably un-prominent seat in Westminster Abbey on Monday and UK prime minister Liz Truss swiftly emerging from Britain’s post-funeral haze to play down chances of a UK-US trade deal happening anytime soon. Putting it bluntly, no talks were happening, nor would any be starting “in the short to medium term”.

Her bilateral meeting in New York with Biden — due to take place on Wednesday, having been postponed from Sunday in London — would instead focus on global security issues. Biden, for his part, was expected to have some things to say about the Northern Ireland protocol.

Nevertheless, the Trussonomics philosophy — her version of the argument that low taxes and deregulation spur economic growth, so the rich shouldn’t be troubled by too much taxation at all — found a way to creep into her overnight address to the UN General Assembly, according to the preview offered by 10 Downing Street, with lines including a reference to her government’s desire for people “to keep more of the money they earn”.

Perhaps the two leaders also discussed Biden’s interestingly timed Tuesday tweet. “I am sick and tired of trickle-down economics. It has never worked,” wrote the Democrat, using the phrase long-associated with US Republican low-tax policies. “We’re building an economy from the bottom up and middle out.”

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It then fell to Truss’s foreign office minister Gillian Keegan to deny Truss’s policies could be categorised as trickle-down economics, given the support packages announced for businesses and households as the energy bills crisis rages. Maybe, in the absence of any meaningful trade talks, Truss and Biden thrashed out the semantics instead.