Brexit: Trade deals are difficult to negotiate and Britain lacks the skills

UK has comparative advantage in whisky, and the US in bourbon

Britain’s prime minister is the first foreign leader to visit the new American president, Donald Trump. They have lots to discuss – international security, immigration, “the special relationship”. There is also much talk of laying the ground for a US-UK trade deal.

Much of the talk of a trade deal, however, misses some of the fundamentals of what trade deals actually are and what they involve. They are agreements over the extent to which countries will agree the scale and scope of access to each other’s markets. These may be reciprocal: “We agree to trade