Theresa May 'looking forward to pursuing' trade deal with Donald Trump

Ms May says she is 'looking forward to pursuing' a new trade deal with the US

Prime Minister Theresa May addressing the Republican congressmen's retreat in Philadelphia ahead of her meeting with Donald Trump on Friday (PA)

Theresa May said she was delighted that Donald Trump’s administration had made a trade deal between the UK and the US “one of its earliest priorities”.

The Prime Minister said she was "looking forward to pursuing talks" about a new UK and US free trade agreement.

“It will take detailed work,” she told leaders of the US President’s Republican Party in a speech in Philadelphia. “But we welcome your openness to these discussions and hope that we can make progress so the new global Britain that emerges after Brexit is even better equipped to take its place confidently in the world.”

Ms May, is only allowed to talk about deals with new partners in principle and cannot make any concrete attempts to negotiate free trade agreements before Britain leaves the EU.

But she said the new deal “must work for both sides and serve both of our national interests”, the Prime Minister

“It must help to grow our respective economies and to provide the high skilled, high paid jobs of the future for working people across America and across the UK,” she said.

“The UK is already America’s fifth largest export destination while your markets account for almost a fifth of global exports from our shores,” she said.

The US was the “largest single destination for UK outward investment and the single largest investor in the UK,” she added. “Your companies are investing or expanding in the UK at the rate of more than 10 projects a week.”

The Prime Minister said that British companies invested in every US state and the US, UK military relationship was “one of the broadest and deepest in the world.”