EU-US trade deal negotiations to resume after German elections, report says

Talks to conclude a trade deal between the United States and European Union will resume after the German elections in September, America’s chief trade negotiator has said.

According to The Times, at a hearing of the House of Representatives ways and means committee on Thursday of the preceding week, Mr Lighthizer said: "For a variety of reasons, it stalled when it did. This was not a very good year to get started because of internal European reasons. They had a series of elections, which made it difficult to make compromises and to really make an agreement."

"The final one of those elections is in September and it’s in Germany. After that I think we will talk to them."

According to the newspaper, his comments reflected the shifting priorities of the US President, who in January said Britain would be the priority for a trade deal with America after criticising trade deals with blocs of countries.

European officials had few hopes for TTIP when Trump was elected. Following the November elections, Cecilia Malmström, the European trade commissioner, said his election victory "puts our EU-US negotiations firmly in the freezer, at least for a while."

However, in April The Times also reported that Britain had been pushed behind the EU in the queue for a free trade deal, which stemmed from a private discussion with Angela Merkel who had convinced him that negotiations regarding a US-EU trade deal would be simpler than thought.

The EU was currently America's biggest trading partner. The US exported $270bn in goods to the EU last year and imported $416bn worth of goods from the bloc, while it exported $55bn to the UK last year and imported $54bn.