Sometimes it helps to have a banker as prime minister. They have plenty of faults. They can be dry, calculating, and they are typically far too rich to connect with ordinary people. But if they have one thing going for them it is this: they can spot free money when they see it. And Rishi Sunk has seized a chance for the UK to take a percentage of the unlimited cash that President Biden is spraying at American industry.
Hundreds of billions in corporate bungs are available, and because it is all in tax credits there is hardly any oversight
Most people will dismiss the Atlantic Declaration that Sunak negotiated with President Biden on his visit to Washington last week as meaningless guff. And, in fairness, most of it would struggle even to hit that low benchmark. Declarations of friendship between the prime minister and president and commitments to a closer relationship and more economic cooperation are a dime a dozen.
“Today the United States and the United Kingdom are announcing the Atlantic Declaration for a twenty-first century US-UK economic partnership to ensure that our unique alliance is adapted, reinforced, and reimagined for the challenges of this moment,” it begins, in prose so laden with cliché it suggests a Foreign Office official got ChatGPT to write it. Hardcore Remainers will point out gleefully that it falls well short of the US trade deal that was meant to be one of the big wins from leaving the European Union, while most exporters won’t even bother to read it given how little difference it will make.
And yet, it does have one interesting twist. It will allow British firms to get subsidies under Biden’s green new deal. So for example, a UK-based firm could get money for shipping batteries for electric vehicles to the US. And, more broadly, British companies will be brought into the orbit of the massive range of subsidies created by Biden’s oddly named Inflation Reduction Act.
In reality, Biden’s green new deal is the biggest corporate gravy train in history. Hundreds of billions in corporate bungs are available, and because it is all in tax credits there is hardly any oversight. In effect, it is lots and lots of easy cash. Even better, British defense manufacturers will soon be counted as “domestic manufacturers” for US procurement, and since the American arms budget is notorious for its profligacy (“a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money” as the saying goes) there will be even more money on the table.
Of course, American taxpayers will have to pay for all that generosity to big corporations. But British ones won’t. True, it won’t transform the British economy, but it will help. Free money is not to be dismissed, and Sunak has grabbed a slice of it — and back when he was working for Goldman Sachs they would have regarded that as a good day’s work.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
