The devil is in the detail of post-Brexit trade deals | Letters

As many people suspected, and as is becoming more and more obvious, the UK, with its sweatshop economy, weak productivity and huge trade deficit, is going to find itself in very chilly waters after we leave the EU ('Unsettled' Brexit will hit UK growth, 17 January). If we succeed in making trade treaties they will mostly be on very unfavourable terms, as we will be on the weak side in most cases (especially with China, the US and the EU). It also becomes more and more obvious that in order to achieve even unfavourable terms we will have to submit to being dominated by big international companies, which will lead to the reintroduction of TTIP-style disputes procedures, a bonfire of labour and environmental protections and policies only acceptable to the hard right of the Conservative party. Brexit is wrong and dangerous: the only way forward is to reverse it.
Jeremy Cushing
Exeter

" I read with distress your article (Brexit rush for US trade deal could force tough concessions, say critics, theguardian.com, 16 January). I found the comments of the UK's ambassador to Washington staggering. For such a senior official to imply that farming is a low priority is worrying. Theresa May said on Tuesday that no trade deal is better than a bad trade deal. It is clear to me that a deal that fundamentally damages a country's ability to feed an urbanised population through short, secure, local supply chains should be firmly categorised as a truly bad deal and one the government should avoid at all costs.