The third round of negotiations of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the United States and the United Kingdom took place from July 27 to August 7, 2020.

33 sessions were carried out in the round, covering 21 different lines of work.

«Positive progress continues to be made in many of the areas covered by an agreement,» the UK government said in a statement.

Most of the chapter areas are now moving into the advanced stages of the talks, with particularly detailed and text-based discussions on intellectual property.

The United Kingdom and the United States also had their first text-based discussions on rules of origin.

Parallel to the negotiations, the Secretary of International Trade held a series of key meetings with the United States Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer.

In these meetings, both parties reviewed the progress of the new FTA negotiations.

The Secretary for International Trade reaffirmed the UK‘s priorities in an FTA, and both sides reaffirmed their commitment to negotiate a comprehensive and ambitious deal.

Regarding the timing of the negotiations, it was agreed that they should continue at the pace during the fall.

FTA

More talks will take place between the third and fourth rounds of negotiations, which are expected to take place in early September.

Likewise, the two parties are expected to exchange their first market access offers in this period of time.

In separate discussions, the Secretary for International Trade also laid out the UK’s position on broader UK-US trade issues, in particular US retaliatory tariffs on UK goods, including Scotch whiskey.

He made it clear that the UK considers these tariffs unacceptable and continued to push for them to be removed immediately.

Chapters

Below is a summary list of the workflows discussed in the NAFTA round of negotiations.

• Good Regulatory Practices (GRP)
• Technical barriers to trade
• Intellectual property
• Investment
• Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS)
• SOEs
• Anti corruption
• Financial services
• Competition
• Ambient
• Service sectors: professional services for companies
• Balance of payments
• Rules of origin
• Cross services
• Legal group-Basic text
• Market access-Textiles
• Commercial remedies
• Market access
• Customs and trade facilitation
• Sectoral annexes
• Telecommunications