GETTY Many people must be ing to the realisation that Trump's presidency could be good for Britain

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Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States. But many more must surely be coming round to the realisation that however much they might loathe the man, his presidency might actually turn out to be good for Britain. In his interview with Tory MP Michael Gove, Trump could not have been clearer: he wants to do a trade deal with us “very quickly”.

With the proposed deal between the US and the EU having collapsed Britain can now have a trade deal with the world’s largest and most vibrant economy sooner than the EU does – ready to take effect the moment that we leave the EU, probably in 2019. What a difference between Trump’s attitude and that of Barack Obama. It is only a few months since the retiring president came to Britain and told us that we would be “sent to the back of the queue” for trade if we voted to leave the EU. For saying this, Obama was cheered to the rafters by Remainers in Britain – praised for belittling us and preparing to punish us.

Why? What is it about the British character – or that of our liberal elite at any rate – that champions a foreign leader who talks down to us while showing contempt for one who shows every sign of wanting to co-operate with us? I am no fan of Donald Trump. I can understand why people have been deeply offended by his comments on women and I still feel disturbed by the statement he made after the 2015 Paris terror attacks calling for a “total shutdown in Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”. But those who still feel aggrieved by Trump’s election should ask themselves this: since you can’t un-elect him, what do you think is best – continuing to treat him as an outcast or engaging with him and making the most of his offer on trade?

GETTY Trump made it very clear to Michael Gove that he wants to do a trade deal with the UK 'very quickly'

Yet Remainers who have been trying to tell us for months that pulling out of the single market will destroy our economy suddenly don’t seem so keen on free trade. They express horror that a deal with the US might mean US companies having access to UK markets, that it might mean “handing power to the US”. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t tell us one minute that the British economy will die with any hindrance to the single market and the next minute try to make out that free trade between Britain and the US will be a disaster. Ideally we would have both: free trade with the US as well as the EU. And there is every reason to believe that following Brexit negotiations and a deal with Donald Trump we will be able to achieve just that. No one can be completely confident that a man who campaigned with promises to rip-up trade deals in order to protect his country’s jobs means what he says when he wants to open trade with Britain.

Donald Trump's most memorable tweets as president Fri, April 21, 2017 Donald Trump's most memorable tweets since elected as President of the United States Play slideshow REUTERS 1 of 22 Donald Trump tweets his way through presidency

GETTY Donald Trump's attitude to trade with the UK is vastly different to Barack Obama's

But it is now, when he is preparing for office rather than doing battle in the bear pit of the presidential debates, that you would expect the true nature of a Trump presidency to become clear. What is emerging is that he is not against free trade per se. What he is against is unwieldy deals between large numbers of countries and deals with countries like China, which he accuses of manipulating its currency. As he said last July, “No longer will we enter into these massive deals, with many countries, that are thousands of pages long, and which no one from our country even reads or understands.” Instead he favours doing trade deals with one country at a time. He has pledged, for example, to pull the US out of the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal between the US and 11 other Pacific rim countries negotiated in 2015. But he also says that he wants to do bilateral deals with those same countries.

GETTY The President-elect has no interest in reviving TTIP