Brown looks to forge tighter transatlantic links

The Chancellor has today hailed the "special relationship" shared between the US and Britain - despite the continuing row over US trade tariffs that have crippled steel exports.

Addressing delegates at the CBI conference in Birmingham today, Gordon Brown said the shared values and the special relationship were "deepening" as he announced a joint US-UK enterprise agreement - an agreement he believed would "make for a stronger relations between America and the whole of Europe".

Last week the World Trade Organisation decided that US steel import tariffs were illegal, prompting further calls for EU to put in place trade sanctions.

However, Mr Brown appealed to move beyond the "damaging trade and regulatory disputes" between Europe and the USA that had "hindered commerce and damaged transatlantic relations".

He said that it had been agreed, alongside efforts to revive the Doha trade talks, to proceed with a major transatlantic review of trade in the form of an independent study on how by "liberalisation, the removal of tariff and non tariff barriers, and agreed approaches to competition and regulation we can reap the benefits".

The Chancellor said it could be worth as much as "$100 billion and one million jobs - from greater trade and investment between our two continents".

Part of our agreement would include incentives for universities to become more entrepreneurial, linking up in research and technology with the setting up of a technology transfer fund to foster exchange of ideas across the Atlantic.

Also proposed were enterprise scholarships for management studies in the USA, sharing best practice on enterprise education, and a joint forum next year to discuss common productivity challenges.

(SP)