The surcharge for foreign transactions is more common than not with credit cards in general. As far as I know, only CapOne and AmEx dont charge a foreign transaction fed but there may be others that don't; Citi, Suntrust and B of A do charge so with any card, read the fine print before traveling. Many times it's cheaper to pay the ATM transaction fee, take out a decent amount of cash, and pay in cash vs racking up 3% fee on every purchase.
As for Barclays, they received no government bailout money during the financial meltdown; not from the US or the UK. Instead, a foreign investment company (which may have been backed by that foreign company's government; I forget some of the particulars) bought quite a bit of ownership interest as an investment, and somewhere in the mix, Barclays really tightened up their credit requirements. To get the Premier card you must have stellar credit although it sounds like many of the great-but-not-exceptional folks will get bumped up to Premier if they simply ask.
Barclays also has a lower tolerance for late or missed payments and credit line overruns; their fees are about the same as other banks but the increase in interest rate will be assessed quickly and is usually a big jump. So it's best to set them up on auto-pay and never give yourself the chance to forget.