WATCH: Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary Cleverly speak on trade bill deadlock

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his UK counterpart expressed their desire for a resolution to the Northern Ireland Protocol during a joint news conference on Tuesday.

Watch the conference in the player above.

“The United States believes that there must be a negotiated settlement to the implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol that’s acceptable to all sides,” said Blinken Tuesday joint press conference with UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly. “We’re heartened that in recent days, the United Kingdom and the European Union have made some sort of progress toward a negotiated solution.”

Cleverly faced questions about the UK’s secrecy around negotiations on the protocol.

“We want to get these things resolved as soon as possible so that the people of Northern Ireland can enjoy full economic freedom, can enjoy the the relief packages that the UK government has put in place to address some of the issues,” said Cleverly. “I have tried to keep our negotiations discreet, and I think that discretion has actually helped us get some things over the line.”

Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government collapsed almost a year ago when the Democratic Unionist Party quit in protest against the trading barriers created by the arrangements known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.

When the U.K. left the EU, the British government and the EU agreed to keep the Irish border free of customs posts and other checks because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.

Instead, new arrangements introduced checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. Unionists are fiercely opposed to the measures, arguing that the new trade border undermines Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.

The DUP is continuing to boycott the regional government until the protocol is drastically altered or removed.