Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday vowed to oppose any post-Brexit trade deal with the United Kingdom that would risk Northern Ireland’s peaceful status quo with Ireland.
In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Schumer praised the Good Friday Agreement between Ireland and the U.K. as a “towering achievement of diplomacy and it planted the seeds of a society based on mutual respect and equality, rather than one based on distrust and discrimination.”
{mosads}The agreement, which created a free and demilitarized border between Ireland and Northern Ireland in 1998, ended the then-decades long Northern Ireland conflict.
Despite successfully maintaining the peace for more than two decades, the agreement is now threatened by the prospect of a British withdrawal from the European Union without a deal.
Exiting that way would likely require imposing a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Schumer joins Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in opposing any U.S.-U.K. trade deal that would threaten the Good Friday Agreement.
“In this, I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the bi-partisan, bi-cameral supporters of the Good Friday Agreement (and opponents of a return to a hard border), especially including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and will do all in my power to work in a bi-partisan way to prevent such pact from receiving the approval of Congress,” the New York Democrat said Monday.
Any new trade deal to substitute the U.S.-U.K. agreements negotiated through the EU would have to be brought to a vote in Congress, meaning the Speaker could block it.
Members of the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have backed a new trade deal regardless of whether a hard border has to be imposed.
National security adviser John Bolton said earlier this month that the U.S. would support a “no deal” Brexit, which would likely trigger the hard border. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also recently said he would support a no-deal exit.
New British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised an exit from the EU by Oct. 31, but faces several roadblocks to negotiating a new deal.