The US would not do a trade deal with the UK any time soon if Britain voted to leave the EU, Barack Obama has said.
The US president said Britain would be “at the back of the queue” when it came to negotiating a new trade agreement because it was better to strike a transatlantic deal with Europe as a whole.
Appearing with David Cameron at the Foreign Office, Obama said he was delivering the warning that the UK is better off in the EU because “part of being friends is being honest”.
Campaigners for Britain to leave the EU have reacted furiously to Obama’s intervention, with the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, suggesting the US president’s part-Kenyan ancestry might have left him with a grudge against the UK.
Asked whether it was right for him to speak out, Obama stressed the EU referendum was a decision for the British people but added: “I’m not coming here to fix any votes. I am offering my opinion and in democracies everyone should want more information, not less, and you shouldn’t be afraid to hear any arguments being made. That is not a threat.”
He went on to cast doubt on the claims of leave campaigners that the UK would easily be able to strike a separate trade deal with the US.
“I think it’s fair to say maybe some point down the line but it’s not going to happen any time soon because our focus is on negotiating with the EU,” he said. “The UK is going to be at the back of the queue.”
He said it would not be a priority “not because we don’t have a special relationship” but because it was more efficient to have one agreement with a lot of countries as a bloc rather than piecemeal arrangements with each one.
Addressing the issue of whether the US would put up with a similar loss of sovereignty as Britain has undergone in the EU, he said his country in its own way constrained itself under norms and rules that made everyone more prosperous.
He added: “I would tell you this. If right now I’ve got access to a massive market where I sell 44% of my exports and now I’m thinking of leaving the organisation that gives me access to that market and is responsible for millions of jobs and an enormous amount of commerce, that is not something I would probably do.”
Cameron said the “strong and essential partnership between our nations has never been more important” and echoed Obama’s argument that the UK’s influence in the world is amplified by EU membership.
The prime minister said he had “never felt constrained in anyway in strengthening our relationship by our membership of the EU – in fact the reverse”.
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