Business Exports: US

11. What steps her Department is taking to support business exports to the US.

[Interruption.] Pardon me for one second; there is a technical failure. The US is our largest trading partner, with trade reaching more than £290 billion. We have already succeeded in agreeing a solution to the section 232 tariffs on UK steel and aluminium and removed the long-standing US ban on UK lamb. In fact, just yesterday, I was speaking to President Biden’s special envoy Joe Kennedy about how we can increase trade and investment in Northern Ireland. We also have an SME dialogue next month between our two countries, supporting UK and US businesses to find export opportunities in each other’s markets.

That is really good news, actually. In other good news, I learned this morning that Britain has overtaken France as a manufacturing country. In order to take full advantage of that, how can we use the nine trade representatives in the United States at our embassy and our consulates even more to encourage bilateral trade?

My hon. Friend is right. We have trade ambassadors and trade envoys working to ensure that we are fully utilising the opportunities that exist across our relationship with the US. In fact, our envoy to the US has been helping and supporting with a memorandum of understanding with Florida, which we are hoping to conclude shortly. If there are specific things he thinks we can do to assist, I would be happy to meet him and organise even more engagement that will help facilitate UK-US trade.