This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 10th, 2020.

I'm Keila Brown.

Now that Brexit is a done deal, the EU and UK will be negotiating trade deals separately, including one with each other.

How will that play out?

And is Boris Johnson, the free trader that we might hope?

Cato Simon Lester comments. Now that the United Kingdom is out of the

European Union I spoke with Ryan Bourne about this recently and one of the concerns that I had was well maybe with the UK

out of the European Union we might see a lot more illiberal policies come out of

the United Kingdom in the realm of trade, how likely

do you think that is?

Well I have the same concerns that you do and we'll see where things go on trade. Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a long speech about this

just yesterday just on February 3rd I think and he said a lot of good things about trade.

He certainly was talking the talk about how you know free trade is good and the UK should be a role model

on the UK, you know we'll go back to its you know former stature status as a as a you know promoter of free trade

throughout the world so so that was all good to hear there are some some worrying

things going on when the UK renegotiates its trade relationship

with the EU. There's the potential here to keep a fairly good trading relationship but some of the rhetoric the

political posturing that's being done from Boris Johnson and others really worries

me and I would hate for the UK no matter how idealistic some of its leaders, you know, sound at times, I would

hate for them to end up in a place where they couldn't negotiate a new trade agreement with the

EU or couldn't negotiate one with the US and we just

end up with more tariffs.

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