“Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of affluence from the lowest barbarism,” Adam Smith mused, “but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.”

Lord David Frost echoed such optimism this week, at remarks before a Business and Trade committee of the House of Commons. He was thinking particularly about the prospects of concluding a free trade agreement with America.

Overall, Lord Frost was content with the progress the United Kingdom had achieved, since regaining its sovereignty, in setting up global trading arrangements. As ever, more can always be done. What is crucial now is timing. 

In respect of America, Lord Frost is hopeful. “The Biden administration hasn’t been particularly interested in bilateral free-trade agreements,” he told the committee, “but second terms can be different to first terms.” To wit: “The politics in America could change, and things could get easier.”

Such would be the case if President Trump returns to the White House. Although Mr. Trump was keen to conclude a trade agreement with the United Kingdom in his first term, events on both sides of the North Atlantic conspired against it.

No less worrying for British free traders having to contend with protectionists in their own Government, was Mr Trump’s predilections for Alexander Hamilton’s “American System.” On this head, Lord Frost was no less sanguine. “We shouldn’t assume a  President Trump’s general skepticism about free trade would necessarily be an insuperable obstacle to a US deal.”

No, obstacles lie closer to home. With the likelihood that Labour will win the next general election, Business and Trade minister Kemi Badenoch is being urged to quicken the pace of finalizing FTAs, as these pacts are known, while there is still time.

“Get on with it and fast,” is the advice from the former director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Mark Littlewood. The fear is that a Labour Government will surreptitiously move the UK back under EU influence.

While Brussels has signaled it is not interested in reopening the deal that Lord Frost negotiated, it does come up for review in 2025. Sir Tony Blair, the former prime minister who remains an advisor to the Labour leadership, sees an opportunity.

“At the moment we’re outside the big political union on our own continent and we’ve got a disrupted trading relationship with our biggest trading partner,” Sir Tony complains, adding, “so you’ve got to fix this stuff.”

Until then, a future Labour Government can always opt for “dynamic alignment.” By shadowing EU regulatory policy for goods and services, the UK can facilitate trade with the rest of Europe. 

However, this effectively binds the UK’s hands in negotiating trade deals with other countries. It also cedes hard-won sovereignty back to the EU. The question then becomes, Is conformity with the Continent worth the loss of other global deals? Mr Littlewood thinks not.

“What I’d like to see this Government do before the election is to tie down some more trade deals,” he says, now serving as the director of the Popular Conservatism organization. “If you start wedding yourselves into those deals, then it actually becomes harder for a future government to re-embed us in the EU’s regulatory orbit.”

On this front, there is some good news. As the Conservative Government honored entrepreneurs with its “Made in the UK, Sold to the World” Awards, Cabinet Office minister Esther McVey announced that “Britain has grown faster than France, Germany, and Italy and is now the fourth largest exporter in the world, up from seventh in 2021 — overtaking France, the Netherlands, and Japan.”

The rise in exports, Ms. McVey continued, is “helped by the UK already having secured trade deals with 73 countries plus the EU, accounting for £1.1 trillion bilateral trade in 2022.” The Brexit promise, at least in the economic sphere, is finally bearing fruit.

Breaking free of bureaucratic diktat — whether it originates from Brussels or Whitehall — was one of the aims of Brexit, after all. The deleterious effects of regulatory burdens to economic prosperity prompted Smith to write in favor of trade liberalization.

“All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavor to arrest the progress of society at a particular point,” he lectured, “are unnatural, and, to support themselves, are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.” 

To counter these tyrannies was the Brexit goal, against the entire Westminster establishment arrayed against the political, economic, and social liberties of the people. The ongoing struggle for Brexit looms all the greater, as the date for a general election nears.

As such, Lord Frost’s Smithian sensibilities for “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration” will serve him well as he makes the case for a U.S.-U.K. bilateral free trade agreement. He stands tall among those few Conservatives who remain true to the tenets of Toryism. 

Americans who adhere to their own constitutional principles will appreciate a chance to fulfill the aspirations of Thomas Jefferson’s first Inaugural Address: 

“Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political,” said the Sage of Monticello; “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

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