UK officials advised to read Trump book before seeking US trade deal

The US academic tipped to be Donald Trump’s ambassador to the EU has told British government advisers they should read the president-elect’s business book The Art of the Deal before starting trade negotiations with the US.

Prof Ted Malloch, a long-time supporter of Trump who will fly out on Wednesday to attend his inauguration, is understood to have been speaking to Downing Street staff after Theresa May’s speech on leaving the EU.

In an interview with Michael Gove for the Times, Trump told the former Tory leadership contender he would seek a trade agreement with the UK “very quickly” once it left the EU.

Malloch, who is based in Britain at the Henley business school, said he believed UK-US advisers could hash out a trade deal behind the scenes during the two-year article 50 process if the UK government was prepared to compromise.

“Trump is so transactional,” Malloch told the Guardian after his meeting with government advisers on Tuesday afternoon. “I was explaining to them [Downing Street] that they needed to read The Art of the Deal if they wanted to understand how Donald Trump’s mind works. It’s very different to a political mind.”

Trump’s 1987 memoir and business advice book was a New York Times bestseller, and includes lines of advice such as: “The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.”

He also advises: “I never get too attached to one deal or one approach. I keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first.”

Malloch said he believed May had had her “finest hour” during the speech at Lancaster House where she said the UK would not be seeking to remain a full member of the European single market, but would instead attempt to broker a free trade deal with the bloc to give businesses and services access to the market.

“It’s going to be a different economic model but one Britain is well-prepared to follow, a trading nation and a capital market,” Malloch said, stressing that he believed political discussions could begin even though the UK is prohibited from formally negotiating trade deals until it leaves the EU at the end of the two-year process after the triggering of article 50.

“A two-year trade deal is ambitious but the parties I was with would be able to get a trade deal, with the right people at the right level, within 90 days,” Malloch said.

“We all know the legal framework, I’m reminded about that all the time by bureaucrats in Brussels, that a deal can’t be done before [two years]. But there’s nothing to stop a group of people going to a resort in Virginia and hammering this out, which isn’t a public affair. We are talking politics here.”

Malloch, who has had formal meetings at Trump Tower about the EU ambassador post over the past few weeks, said he would describe Trump’s approach to the EU as “sceptical” but not anti-European.

“I think the European project will be redefined, with Brexit and other exits to come. It’s not as a result of an American heavy hand though. It’s a result of political forces in Europe,” he said.

“In the [French election] runoffs now we most probably have a right nationalist and a right Thatcherite. No one could have predicted that three or four months ago.

“I think his preference is for bilateral relationships and trade deals, to the degree that is possible.”