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Trade deals “were honed in as something that could be held up as a trophy,” Sam Lowe, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think tank, told me.

There is growing speculation that Mr Johnson is aiming for a general election, said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a research institute based in London, since his working parliamentary majority has dwindled to just one. But that presents other perils.“If he is going into an election, he has to be very careful not to be seen as Trump’s poodle,” he said. The opposition Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is already trying to disparage Mr. Johnson as “Britain’s Trump.”

According to the Centre for European Reform, the Visegrad 4 (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia) collectively is now Germany's most important trade partner, ahead of China and the US, due to their integration in EU supply chains.

Nor do tariffs necessarily explain patterns of global trade. Consider American automobiles, whose relative unpopularity in Europe owes more to narrow streets than EU import duties, said Sam Lowe, a trade-policy expert at the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think tank focused on EU affairs.

“What Bolton is proposing is not realistic," said Sam Lowe from the Centre for European Reform. "Why would Congress sign off on anything that doesn’t have agriculture included?”"All Congress cares about is agriculture and dismantling the EU’s regulatory approach to food and chemicals,” Lowe argued. Any deal that falls short of that would not be ratified, regardless of Bolton's assurances.