This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Rishi Sunak comes to Washington’

Sonja Hutson
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, June 9th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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Tesla’s letting General Motors into its walled garden of chargers. Turkey’s return to rational economic policy so far means a plunging lira. Plus, we’ll talk about Rishi Sunak’s visit with Joe Biden yesterday.

James Politi
I think that’s very important for Britain because their ties with the European Union have frayed economically since Brexit.

Sonja Hutson
I’m Sonja Hutson, in for Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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Starting next year, General Motors drivers will be able to plug their electric cars into 12,000 of Tesla’s fast-charging stations. It’s similar to a move that Tesla announced with Ford last month. Tesla operates the majority of fast-charging stations across the country. GM’s chief executive called it, “an important next step in expanding access”. For right now, though, GM vehicles will have to use an adaptor to connect to the chargers.

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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak met with US President Joe Biden in Washington yesterday. The two leaders played up their relationship. Here’s Sunak.

Rishi Sunak
And we were talking earlier about our hometowns. Joe is very rightly proud of Scranton, and I was telling him a little bit about Southampton in England where I’m from.

Sonja Hutson
And they announced an economic agreement called the Atlantic declaration. To find out more about what went down during the summit, I met up with our Washington bureau chief James Politi in our DC bureau just a few blocks from the White House. Hi, James.

James Politi
Hi.

Sonja Hutson
So are they really as cosy as they would like us to believe?

James Politi
Well, they have met I think they mentioned, you know, four times in the past four months. Sunak has been in office as prime minister for less than a year. So it’s really a budding relationship. And I think that they’re starting to certainly have a better dynamic than certainly we saw with Biden and previous British prime ministers.

Sonja Hutson
How big of a deal is this Atlantic declaration?

James Politi
It’s really an important step towards kind of strengthening their . . . the economic relationship, but it falls short of a like comprehensive free trade agreement. So it sort of narrowly focuses on certain areas where I think both in London and Washington, they want to strengthen supply chains and the resilience of supply chains.

Sonja Hutson
Can you give us a few highlights of what’s in there?

James Politi
Well, so it will allow the British manufacturers to qualify for clean energy tax credits in the United States. It’ll open up some of the defence procurement to British companies. And it also includes a recognition of Britain’s role in artificial intelligence as they try to kind of set new norms and sort of ramp up their capacity in that sector.

Sonja Hutson
What does this mean for the UK? What does this agreement mean for our friends across the pond?

James Politi
Well, I think they can say that, you know, at the very least, things are kind of kicking into higher gear in terms of economic ties in a way, and in sort of on terms that are set by Biden and by the US. But at least they’re kind of forging an economic relationship that is stronger than it was. And I think that’s very important for Britain because their ties with the European Union have frayed economically since Brexit, and they’ve kind of made no secret that they have to improve their economic ties with the rest of the world. And the US was a pretty big hole in that space.

Sonja Hutson
So, James, what does this economic pact mean for China and supply chains and, you know, our place on the global stage?

James Politi
It’s an attempt to what President Biden would call sort of de-risk the US from Chinese supply chains. The latest sort of chapter in that effort. It’s an attempt to say it’s better if our supply chains are integrated with western economies, democracies around the world. And though the US does not support like a wholesale decoupling, they’re trying to gradually limit the exposure of American supply chains to, to China because you never know what might happen geopolitically.

Sonja Hutson
So there’s this classic phrase that people use to describe the relationship between the US and the UK. They talk about the “special relationship”, that the countries have. Does that still hold true?

James Politi
I think to a certain extent it still does. I mean, you could tell in the room today, in the East Room of the White House, that there was, there is definitely something particularly important about the UK and US relationship. And I think you can feel it at the moment, especially on the geopolitical front. I think probably over time and with different leaders in the White House and in No 10, you will see that in different areas. So, sometimes that’ll be sort of more of a political alliance. Sometimes it’ll be more of an economic alliance. In this case, I think it’s more of a geopolitical alliance.

Sonja Hutson
James Politi is the FT’s Washington bureau chief. Thanks, James.

James Politi
Thank you.

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Sonja Hutson
Turkey’s currency plunged this week after a new finance minister took office. Mehmet Şimşek promised a return to what he called rational policy. Here’s the FT’s Turkey correspondent Adam Samson.

Adam Samson
The lira was seen as very, very overvalued because the government was taking all these measures to prop it up. The main one being economists think they spend billions of dollars of their foreign currency reserves to do that. And so as they slow down this intervention, the lira is expected to fall quite a bit. So it’s one of these weird times when a fall actually isn’t necessarily seen as a bad thing.

Sonja Hutson
Adam, how does the lira falling help Turkey’s economy, which I should mention, is one of the world’s biggest. So there’s a lot at stake here.

Adam Samson
I mean, the idea is, if everything goes to plan, you let the lira weaken and then your exports start rising because Turkish goods become cheaper. And your imports start falling because the cost of imported goods becomes more expensive. That should really help close the current account deficit, which is quite wide right now in Turkey. And that’s one of the really big problems the Turkish economy has actually.

Sonja Hutson
And is another goal to bring back foreign investors?

Adam Samson
Exactly. That’s the other thing. It makes Turkish assets cheaper for foreign investors, too. So it gives them an incentive to come here. I mean, investors have basically deserted Turkey over the last several years because of all these unconventional policies, and also in part because the lira seems very overvalued. So it could hopefully bring some foreign capital in as well.

Sonja Hutson
So more broadly, how significant is this move back to more orthodox economic policy?

Adam Samson
I mean, I think people see it as potentially quite a big deal if they really make sort of a durable shift towards more orthodox policies. They’ve done this before, though, and people are very, very worried that they’ll do it for, you know, six months. And then the president will decide that he doesn’t want to continue on that path anymore. Maybe it’s because people are hurting from the weaker lira or he doesn’t like the higher interest rates or that sort of thing, and then he changes course. So, I mean, I’d say the mood from investor is cautious optimism, but cautious definitely being the keyword.

Sonja Hutson
Adam Samson is the FT’s Turkey correspondent.

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You can read more on all these stories at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back next week for the latest business news.

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The FT News Briefing is produced by Marc Filippino, Fiona Symon and me, Sonja Hutson. Our editor is Jess Smith. We had help this week from Katie McMurran, David da Silva, Michael Lello and Gavin Kallmann. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio, and our theme song is by Metaphor Music.

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