Policy paper

The Atlantic Declaration

Updated 21 June 2023

This was published under the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government

1. The Atlantic Declaration: A framework for a twenty-first century US-UK Economic Partnership

Today the United States and the United Kingdom are announcing the Atlantic Declaration for a Twenty-First Century U.S.-UK Economic Partnership to ensure that our unique alliance is adapted, reinforced, and reimagined for the challenges of this moment.

Over the last century, the essential partnership between the United States and the United Kingdom has enabled us to lead together on issues of global importance. Since the signing of the Atlantic Charter in 1941, we have worked together to shape an open and rules-based international order based on our enduring support for shared values. In the New Atlantic Charter signed in 2021, we underscored and refreshed this vision. Together, we also designed an international economic architecture that has underpinned our economic strength and helped to lift millions around the world out of poverty. Our essential bilateral relationship is underpinned by the closest cooperation on defence and security, a thriving economic relationship, leadership in science and technology, and deep ties between our people and civil societies.

U.S.-UK cooperation and joint leadership is as essential today as ever – both internationally and for the security and prosperity of our people at home. To achieve this, we must keep pace with changes in the world around us and adapt our alliance to them. The global economy is undergoing one of the greatest transformations since the Industrial Revolution. Breakthroughs in innovation offer enormous potential if we can harness them to work for, not against, our democracies and security. The transition to the clean energy economies of the future is an opportunity to improve jobs and livelihoods and deepen the resilience of our economies. At the same time, the nature of national security is changing. Technology, economics, and national security are more deeply intertwined than ever before. We face new challenges to international stability – from authoritarian states such as Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC); disruptive technologies; non-state actors; and transnational challenges like climate change.

Over the past year, we have taken steps to deepen our unrivalled defence, security, and intelligence relationship across every theatre in the globe in which we cooperate, recognizing the indivisibility of security in the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific and other regions. We have energised our traditional alliances and built new and innovative partnerships based on deeper cooperation on technology, trade, and security. We have stood shoulder to shoulder in our resolve to support Ukraine for as long as it takes in the face of Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression and to preserve a free, independent, and sovereign Ukraine. We are committed to continuing to strengthen NATO’s ability to deter further attempts to undermine Alliance security, in support of NATO’s new Strategic Concept.

We have taken significant steps to implement AUKUS, including announcing our plans to support Australia acquiring conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines. Through our deeper engagement in the Indo-Pacific we are working more closely than ever before with our partners to support a free and open region. Through the U.S.-UK Indo-Pacific Dialogue we will continue to find new opportunities to coordinate our approaches, to support ASEAN and ASEAN centrality, to partner with the Pacific Islands, to coordinate on economic and technological advancement, and to contribute to regional peace and stability, including through AUKUS and expanded joint exercises and planning, including trilaterally.

Today, we are announcing the Atlantic Declaration for a Twenty-First Century U.S.-UK Economic Partnership to build on that partnership in the economic sphere. The United States and the United Kingdom resolve to partner to build resilient, diversified, and secure supply chains and reduce strategic dependencies. We remain committed to continuing to lead in the technologies of the future and advance the closest possible coordination on our economic security and technology protection toolkits to ensure that emerging technologies work for, not against, our democracies and security. And as democratic and open societies we resolve to work together to ensure the safety, prosperity, and security of our nations and peoples while driving growth in living standards across the world.

The Atlantic Declaration and accompanying Action Plan form the basis of a new type of innovative partnership across the full spectrum of our economic, technological, commercial and trade relations; a first of its kind that has never been tried before, and which demands our joint leadership and imagination to realise in full.

It will constitute a new economic security framework covering ever-closer cooperation on critical and emerging technologies and stronger protective toolkits. It will support the United States and the United Kingdom in our efforts to harness the energy transition and technological breakthroughs to drive broadly shared growth, create good jobs, and leave no community behind. It will explore ways to deepen our trade and investment relationship. And it will strengthen our alliance across defence, science, health security, and space – allowing us to explore increased cooperation in other areas for mutual economic benefit.

These are the pressing economic issues of our time. These are the issues that demand the United States and the United Kingdom to lead together.

1.1 Action Plan for a Twenty-First Century U.S.-UK Economic Partnership (ADAPT)

Deep economic ties between the United States and the United Kingdom have long been a source of mutual strength. The U.S.-UK bilateral investment relationship is the largest in the world, with over $1.5 trillion in stock [£ 1.2 trillion] supporting more than 2.7 million jobs in both countries. As we evolve our unparalleled economic relationship to reflect today’s challenges, we have an opportunity to exemplify what a twenty-first century economic partnership should look like. Together the United States and the United Kingdom can lead in building a new form of economic partnership that advances economic growth and competitiveness, that builds capacity, resilience, and inclusiveness, and works for our workers and communities. A partnership that works for our hard-working businesses, works for our climate, and works for our national security.

As the first steps in this new partnership, we are today announcing and taking concrete and coordinated actions to deepen this partnership across five pillars, by:

• ensuring U.S.-UK leadership in critical and emerging technologies,
• advancing ever-closer cooperation on our economic security and technology protection toolkits and supply chains,
• partnering on an inclusive and responsible digital transformation,
• building the clean energy economy of the future, and
• further strengthening our alliance across defence, health security, and space.

Senior White House and Downing Street representatives will convene biannually under the Atlantic Declaration Action Plan (ADAPT) to develop and drive forward concrete progress across the Atlantic Declaration Action Plan and ensure increasing ambition over the next months and years.

1.2 1. Ensuring U.S.-UK Leadership in Critical and Emerging Technologies

A handful of critical and emerging technologies are forming the backbone of new industries and shaping our national security landscape. ​These technologies include semiconductors, quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, cutting-edge telecommunications, and synthetic biology. As the home of world-leading companies and academic institutions, we are committed to ensuring the United States and the United Kingdom continue to lead across these sectors. We intend to do so by collaborating on tangible research and development joint efforts ​, deepening public-private dialogue across our priority technologies, jointly mobilizing private capital towards strategic technologies​ ​​and by improving reciprocal talent flows​.​ These long term initiatives​ ​are the initial steps in a long-term partnership and will fall under existing U.S.-UK frameworks including the U.S.-UK Agreement on Scientific and Technological Cooperation, the U.S.-UK Comprehensive Dialogue on Technology and Data, and additional forums as applicable, through which we will ​​​ develop and deliver a shared workplan on critical and emerging technologies, to be updated and taken forward within the next twelve months. ​

Launching​​ collaborative work on priority technologies. ​We intend to explore joint efforts and collaborative R&D in a range of critical and emerging technologies and pursue a set of initial activities, including the following:

• Pursuing a range of quantum technologies initiatives to address fundamental research questions in quantum science and other initiatives to reduce barriers to U.S.-UK collaboration, such as increasing researcher and student mobility, and exploring workforce development activities to foster the exchange of people and ideas.
• Cementing leadership by the United States and the United Kingdom in cutting-edge telecoms by setting out a joint vision, taking forward joint R&D projects, and deepening cooperation on technical activity in innovative 5G and 6G solutions, including more ambitious cooperation to accelerate Open RAN to market, and to increase the diversity and resilience of critical supply chains.
• Deepening cooperation on synthetic biology with a view to concluding a joint workplan to drive public and private cooperation, exchanges, and joint research, developing novel applications and promoting our economic security through improved supply chain pathways for biomanufacturing and biotechnologies.
• Exploring collaborative R&D in areas that support advanced semiconductor technologies, such as advanced materials and compound semiconductors, beginning in the next twelve months, and facilitating collaboration among our national research institutes.
• Accelerating our cooperation on AI with a focus on ensuring the safe and responsible development of the technology.​

Mobilising private capital towards strategic technologies.

We intend to support the growth of companies in both countries across these critical and emerging technologies. We intend to work together to crowd in private capital to ensure companies in these areas have the ability to emerge and scale. To this end, we commit to set up a U.S.-UK Strategic Technologies Investor Council within the next twelve months. We will use this newly formed Council to bring leading investors from both sides of the Atlantic together with national security experts to analyse where funding gaps currently exist and unlock new private investment in critical and emerging technologies.

Facilitating reciprocal talent flows.

We recognise the need for a skilled workforce across our technology sectors. As part of meeting this objective, we leverage expertise from across the public sector, industry, and academia to advise on how we best improve U.S.-UK reciprocal talent flows. The United States welcomes funding from the United Kingdom for expansion of Marshall and Fulbright scholarships focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects, to deepen the ​​wider ​​exchange of talent between our two countries.​

1.3 2. Advancing Ever Closer Cooperation on Technology Protection, Economic Security Toolkits and Supply Chains

Many of our technology protection tools were designed for a different time, a different set of threats, and a different set of technologies. We recognise that our current regulatory frameworks related to export controls, investment screening, sanctions, and research and development security are essential tools that should correspond to a changing geostrategic and technological environment. We intend to take concrete steps to update and more closely align our respective toolkits across all these areas to prevent the leakage of sensitive and dual-use emerging technologies, and other export-controlled commodities and technologies. We will work to enhance our information-sharing mechanisms on threat information with relevant stakeholders in the policy and intelligence communities, including deepening our cooperation on investment security.

Addressing the national security risks posed by certain types of outbound investment.

As allies with a close and long-standing defence partnership, and as global leaders in critical and emerging technologies, we have a shared objective in preventing our companies’ capital and expertise from fueling technological advances that will enhance the military and intelligence capabilities of countries of concern. We are taking steps to ensure that our respective toolkits are adequate to meet our shared objective. The United States is working to develop a targeted set of controls on outbound investments in sensitive technologies with a core national security nexus. The United Kingdom intends to complement this by swiftly engaging a range of business and financial stakeholders to develop an evidence base to assess and inform how the UK can best calibrate its actions to respond effectively to these risks and meet our shared objective. As we act according to our own respective timelines, we will communicate clearly to the private sector regarding our joint resolve and shared objectives in this area.

Ensuring flexible and coordinated export controls.

Against the backdrop of a rapidly shifting and ever more sophisticated technological landscape, our toolkits must address evolving challenges. We will therefore work together to enable our respective toolkits to work in a complementary way, implementing export controls related to certain sensitive technologies, including targeting end-uses of concern, and considering our approach to tackling the challenge of intangible transfers. The United Kingdom has enhanced its capability in this area by expanding the scope of its Military End Use Controls (MEUC) regime and is progressing work – due to complete by the autumn – to understand its impact. The United Kingdom will consult later this year on updating its export control regime and consider how best to flexibly and rapidly tackle sensitive technology transfers. The United Kingdom will also consult on the targeting of end uses and end-users of concern. Building on our existing cooperation and recognising that the multilateral system faces challenges in accommodating new realities and that creative solutions are necessary, both sides will advance work and bilateral consultations in the coming months to enable deeper collaboration and ensure both our export control systems are able together to tackle the identified threats.

Strengthening our world-leading partnership across sanctions strategy, design, targeting, implementation and enforcement.

We will continue to coordinate our work to tackle sanctions evasion and intend to jointly target those facilitating Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in Russia, Belarus, and in third countries, including those who help Russia acquire goods and technology that support Russian aggression. We intend to enhance our ability to collect, analyse, and share information and data with a financial sanctions nexus from our financial institutions and businesses, including for identification of companies and individuals financially supporting or facilitating payments to Russia’s war machine. We further intend to work closely together to protect humanitarian activity from unintended impacts of sanctions, building on our significant cooperation on the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 2664. We have implemented exceptions for humanitarian activities in our UN programs. The United States has implemented these exceptions in its autonomous sanctions programs, and the United Kingdom will take this further in its autonomous sanctions programs as appropriate. We will also continue joint work to underline that food supplies, are not the target of our sanctions.

Reducing our vulnerabilities across critical technology supply chains.

Recent events have shown that our supply chains need to be made more resilient to geopolitical incidents, natural disasters, third country policies, economic coercion, and other possible shocks. The United Kingdom and United States recognise the strategic and shared imperative of building resilient semiconductor and other critical technology supply chains and are putting in place robust strategies to minimise disruptions. In order to further this cooperation, the United States and the United Kingdom will work bilaterally to share analysis, develop, and deepen our channels for coordination and timely consultation during critical technology supply chain disruptions and crises.

1.4 Partnering on an Inclusive and Responsible Digital Transformation

As we promote the critical and emerging technology ecosystems in our countries, we will work together to shape the policy environment around technology and enable further responsible innovation.

Enhancing cooperation on data.

The trusted and secure flow of data across our borders is foundational to efforts to further innovation. To that end, we have committed in principle to establish a U.S.-UK Data Bridge to facilitate data flows between our countries while ensuring strong and effective privacy protections. We are working to finalise our respective assessments swiftly to implement this framework. We also intend to coordinate to further promote trust in the digital economy, including through support for the Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) Forum and the OECD’s Declaration on Government Access to Personal Data Held by Private Sector Entities, and to build shared understandings on data security risks.

Accelerating cooperation on AI.

​​ The United States and the United Kingdom recognise Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform our societies and economies and share a commitment to the role of government action to unlock the opportunities and mitigate the risks arising from the rapid development of these technologies.​​ We will accelerate our cooperation on AI with a focus on ensuring the safe and responsible development of the technology. Both nations welcome ongoing activity internationally including at the OECD, UN, Global Partnership for AI, Council of Europe, and International Standards Organisations, as well as the G7 Hiroshima AI Process, and recognise the need to go further particularly with respect to the risks and opportunities AI presents. The United States welcomes the Prime Minister’s plans to launch the first Global Summit on AI Safety, to be hosted in the United Kingdom this year, and commits to attend at a high level. This effort, which fits with the United Kingdom’s comprehensive and balanced approach to AI risks and opportunities, will bring together key countries, as well as leading technology companies and researchers, to drive targeted, rapid international action focused on safety and security at the frontier of this technology, including exploring safety measures to evaluate and monitor risks from AI.The United States has taken strong action to promote responsible innovation and is undertaking a process to advance a comprehensive approach to AI-related risk and opportunities, including comprehensive engagement with companies, research, civil society, and our allies and partners.

Deepening collaboration on Privacy Enhancing Technologies.

To maximise the responsible use of data, we intend to launch a Collaboration on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) that will allow us to gain more valuable insight from data and train responsible AI models, enabling economic and societal benefits, while protecting individuals’ privacy and our democratic principles.

1.5 4. Building the Clean Energy Economy of the Future

The United States and the United Kingdom are both committed to meeting our goals under the Paris Agreement, building a clean energy economy, strengthening resilient supply chains, and investing in our industrial bases. We share a belief that building a clean energy economy is one of the most significant opportunities to create good jobs with high labour standards. We affirm that bold investment and strategic public funding are necessary to achieve these goals. We are committed to deepening cooperation to develop and strengthen clean energy supply chains, including building diverse, resilient, and secure critical mineral and battery supply chains that reduce unwanted strategic dependencies to meet our defence, economic, energy security, and climate goals. As we pursue our national strategies, we will work to align our approaches wherever possible to make clean energy technologies more affordable for all nations and help drive a global, just, and secure energy transition for workers and communities that will leave no one behind. We are committed to making the 2020s the decisive decade for climate action, implementing our respective ambitious 2030 nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement, and meeting our 2050 net zero emission goals.

Launching negotiations on a Critical Minerals Agreement.

With congressional consultation, we intend to immediately begin negotiations on a targeted critical minerals agreement covering the five relevant critical minerals most important for electric vehicles – cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, and nickel – that are extracted or processed in the United Kingdom count toward sourcing requirements for clean vehicles eligible for the Section 30D clean vehicle tax credit of the Inflation Reduction Act. We intend to use these focused negotiations to ensure the consistency of our approaches on supply chain diversification and robust labour and environmental standards to support the creation of well-paying jobs with a free and fair choice to join a labour union on both sides of the Atlantic. Through our strong U.S.-UK partnership we will work towards increasing our respective and collective clean energy industrial capacity, boosting electric vehicle production and deployment, and expanding access to sustainable, secure, high-standard critical mineral and battery supply chains.

Partnering on a Joint Clean Energy Supply Chain Action Plan.

Today we are announcing the launch of a one-year Joint Clean Energy Supply Chain Action Plan. Through the U.S.-UK Joint Action Group on Energy Security and Affordability (the JAG), the United States and the United Kingdom will, by the end of 2023, identify and decide on near-term actions our two countries can take in parallel and together to accelerate the buildout of capacity in our countries and third countries sufficient to meet the clean energy demands of the future. We intend to conduct public-private consultations across key clean energy supply chains, including offshore wind and electric vehicle batteries, and conduct rapid stress-test exercises across key clean energy supply chains, which could form a model for future work on supply chain resilience.

Launching a Civil Nuclear Partnership.

Building on our unique economic and security relationship, and recognizing our complementary capabilities, we are launching a civil nuclear partnership overseen by senior officials in both governments. The JAG will also be mobilised to set near-term priorities for joint action to encourage the establishment of new infrastructure and end-to-end fuel cycle capabilities by 2030 in both continents, and substantially minimise reliance on Russian fuel, supplies, and services. Our joint activity and leadership will support and facilitate the safe, secure, and sustainable international deployment of advanced, peaceful nuclear technologies, including small modular reactors, in accordance with the highest non-proliferation standards and consistent with a 1.5 degree Celsius limit on global warming. These priorities will form the basis of a Joint Standing Committee on Nuclear Energy Cooperation (JSCNEC), which is designed to deliver on shared commitments by the end of the year and serve as an enduring bilateral forum to advance shared policy goals across existing engagement mechanisms, including near-term actions identified through the JAG, and facilitate exchanges on new and evolving technical and policy developments regarding nuclear energy.

1.6 5. Strengthening our Alliance Across Defence, Health Security, and Space

We are further strengthening the U.S.-UK alliance in emerging areas with critical nexuses to economic resilience and economic security.

Continuing to optimise our longstanding defence cooperation.

We continue to optimise our longstanding defence cooperation and ensure that defence and technology trade and exports between our countries are as frictionless as possible, particularly as part of our efforts to enable collaboration in and between AUKUS nations. To this end, the President plans to ask the United States Congress to add the United Kingdom as a “domestic source” within the meaning of Title III of the Defense Production Act. Doing so would deepen industrial base collaboration, accelerate, and strengthen AUKUS implementation, build new opportunities for United States investment in multiple strategic sectors, and support our efforts to increase our respective and collective industrial capacity across both clean energy and key technology sectors. Together the U.S. and the UK are taking steps to streamline defence trade between our nations, including the U.S. proposal to Congress to modernise export control laws to enhance collaboration between and among AUKUS nations. The UK is also examining its export control regime to streamline the flow of defence trade among the AUKUS partners.

Strengthening bilateral cooperation on biological and health security.

Building on the New Atlantic Charter, we commit to strengthening bilateral collaboration between our two nations on biological security, reflecting our shared ambition to bolster future heath and economic resilience against a growing and diverse spectrum of biological threats (deliberate, accidental, or natural), including drug-resistant infections. To this end, we will increase our collaboration to overcome the market failures that prevent vital research and development of anti-microbial vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics – via mechanisms such as the Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X). We will enhance our cooperation on tackling emerging infectious disease threats with pandemic or epidemic potential and promote biosafety, biosecurity, and responsible innovation in the biotechnology and life science sectors domestically and internationally to realise the full potential of the growing bioeconomy. We reaffirm our commitment to strengthen global norms against the misuse of biology and prohibitions on the development of biological weapons.

Looking to the future and deepening our partnership across all sectors of space cooperation.

We recognise recent bilateral innovation in commercial space launch and are committed to further strengthening bilateral commercial space cooperation, including in the field of deep space communications. We are committed to taking tangible steps to deepen our collaboration on space sustainability and our respective regulations. The United States welcomes the close partnership with the United Kingdom on heliophysics missions and the United Kingdom’s contribution to the NASA Helioswarm mission in particular. The United States welcomes potential participation by the United Kingdom in future commercial space station concepts. The United States and the United Kingdom are committed to studying opportunities for cooperation on space nuclear power and propulsion in accordance with their respective domestic laws and consistent with international obligations and commitments.