Experts suggest US-UK trade deal won’t be as comprehensive as Trump claims
In his post on Truth Social Donald Trump said that trade deal with the UK would be “full and comprehensive”. (See 11.31am.)
But commentators and journalists who have been briefed on what to expect are suggesting it will be much more limited.
Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Jonathan Haskel, an economics professor and a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, said:
People should remember that there’s a very big difference between trade deals and trade agreements.
Trade deals are limited and short-term and partial, just covering a few items. Trade agreements are broad based and long term.
Now, in his Truth Social post [the first one – see 6.59am] Mr Trump announced that this was a trade deal. So I’d urge people not to expect very much.
The Financial Times is reporting that “British officials acknowledge [the deal] will fall far short of the kind of comprehensive post-Brexit free trade agreement targeted by the past Conservative government”.
In its report on the trade deal, the New York Times says:
Timothy C. Brightbill, an international trade attorney at Wiley Rein, said the announcement would probably be “just an agreement to start the negotiations, identifying a framework of issues to be discussed in the coming months.”
“We suspect that tariff rates, nontariff barriers and digital trade are all on the list — and there are difficult issues to address on all of these,” he added.
This how Politico sums up what we are expecting.
This was never meant to be a comprehensive free trade agreement (FTA) with the U.S., of the sort that previous Tory governments tried and failed to win. Instead, this had been pitched by U.K. officials as a narrow economic pact to avoid tariffs and work together on AI and critical tech. How narrow or otherwise, we should know soon.
And Sky News is reporting that nothing will actually be signed today. It says:
No physical UK-US trade document will be signed today, Sky News understands.
That’s because the announcement from London and Washington is around what’s being described as the general terms of an agreement, rather than a full fat trade deal.
A big India-style agreement, this is not.
Key events
Donald Trump has arrived in the Oval Office, Sky News reports.
Peter Mandelson, the UK’s ambassador to the US, will reportedly be in the White House for the trade deal announcement. As a former EU trade commissioner, Mandelson has played a pivotal role, the BBC’s Faisal Islam reports. Islam says:
[Mandelson] also knows the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent well, enough to refer to him by his first name.
It just so happens that, in the past month – since the bond markets reacted very badly to the original White House tariffs announcement – Bessent has been running the show, controlling negotiations, at the expense of the hard-line protectionist Pete Navarro.
John Swinney says he will vote against Scottish assisted dying bill
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland, has said he will vote against a bill to legalise assisted dying in Scotland, arguing it could put the vulnerable and weak under too much pressure and damage the doctor-patient relationship.
Swinney’s position, set out before a stage one vote in Holyrood on a new bill next week, was expected by advocates of the right to assisted dying but will be a blow to their campaign.
The vote on Tuesday will test whether MSPs want the bill to be properly examined and amended before a final vote later this year.
Speaking to reporters in his office at Holyrood, Swinney said he had “agonised” about the issue after meeting numerous constituents who had urged him to support the measure. “This is an incredibly finely-balanced judgement,” he said.
But he confirmed he was against it on principle, having previously voted against it when two previous bills were tabled at Holyrood.
He could not “disassociate” the debate from his Christian faith and acknowledged his wife’s terminal illness with multiple sclerosis heavily influenced his thinking. “I can’t contemplate that conversation with my wife,” he said.
He said the new bill by Liam McArthur, the Scottish Lib Dem MSP, was far better drafted than its predecessors, and could be strengthened to add greater protections for the vulnerable, but he still believed it would “fundamentally alter” the onus on doctors to preserve life. He said the challenge for government was to ensure palliative care was far better.
The White House announcement is running late. Donald Trump was due to speak at 3pm UK time but, according to Sky News, the press conference will start about half an hour late.
Keir Starmer is holding a press conference later on a visit outside London. But, as Hugo Gye from the i reports, Downing Street’s attempts to get reporters there too have gone a little awry.
Oh dear.
No10 seems to have sent all the lobby journalists hoping to question the PM about the US trade deal to the wrong location.
The address they gave us for his speech is a 35-minute drive from the correct one (or 90 mins on public transport).
Oh well!
Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry, told the World at One that the US-UK trade deal could be “fantastic” for the car industry. It will reportedly include the 25% tariff on UK car imports into the US being reduced. Saker said:
It’s a very positive step forward. The tariffs were going to hit the UK manufacturers and the broader sector quite hard. And, if there’s any relief that’s given within this new agreement which allows that be taken away, it will be fantastic.
Jaguar Land Rover export 100,000 vehicles to the US, and that was going to hit them badly, with the tariff. So, on the whole – very positive. Obviously, the devil will be in the detail.
The World at One interviewed Timothy C Brightbill, the American trade lawyer quoted in the New York Times today commenting on the US-UK trade deal. (See 12.38pm.) Brightbill told the programme that he thought the deal would be a “solid step forward by the administration, potentially starting to move the United States away from a trade war posture and back towards a more normal bilateral trade relationship with a key US ally”.
Disability benefit cuts impossible to support, 42 Labour MPs tell Starmer
More than 40 Labour MPs have warned the prime minister that planned disability cuts are “impossible to support” and have called for a pause and change in direction, Jessica Elgot reports.
There is a full list of the Labour MPs who have signed the letter here.
Here is the latest assessment of what will be in today’s US-UK trade deal from Robert Peston from ITV News.
Today’s agreement between the UK and US is principally about cuts to Trump’s 25% tariff on £10bn of UK car exports to US and £3bn of steel and aluminium exports. I assume it will fine down to Trump’s baseline global 10% tariff. A wider more ambitious UK/US trade agreement is still months years away. For these initial tariff reductions, Starmer is NOT cutting or scrapping the Digital Services Tax, which raises £800m per annum from the likes of Amazon, Meta and Google – but that tax is likely to be in play during the next round of negotiations
No 10 declines to repeat Trump’s claim UK-US trade deal will be ‘full and comprehensive’
At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson ducked questions about whether President Trump was right to say the US-UK trade deal is “full and comprehensive”. (See 11.31am.)
Asked if this was right, the spokesperson said:
We’ve always been clear that we want to do a deal that’s in the British national interest, and support a substantial UK-US trading relationship. Those talks are continuing and we look forward to providing an update later today.
The spokesperson also said that Keir Starmer would be describing it in his own words when he speaks later today.
Trump’s language is best understood by reference to a famous passage in his 1987 book Art of the Deal where he said, essentially, it was always good to exaggerate. Trump said:
The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.
I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration – and a very effective form of promotion.
That was almost 40 years ago. Since then Trump has become a bit less fussy about the “truthful” bit, but it remains a useful description of his outlook.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has said she wants to see trade barriers between the UK and the rest of the word fall, ahead of the expected announcement about a US-UK trade deal.
She told reporters today’s announcement follows a deal with India and comes ahead of the UK-EU summit later this month which is also expected to focus on smoothing trade.
Reeves said: “We want to see trade barriers between the UK and countries around the world fall.”
Kitty Donaldson in the i has published what it says are fresh details of what will be in the US-UK trade deal. She describes it as a “solid agreement” and says it will include:
Other reports have said that the deal will include the UK cutting its tariffs on car, meat and shellfish imports from the US.
Former Tory chief whip praises Starmer for his ‘patient, mediation-led’ approach to handling Trump
James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, was non-committal when asked about the US-UK trade deal in interviews this morning. (See 7.54am). Earlier this week the Conservative party initially welcome the UK-India trade deal – before criticising it about half an hour later, once Tories had had time to look at the detail.
But the Tory MP Julian Smith, a former chief whip, has praised the government for its work on this deal. He posted this on social media.
Politics & details aside, today’s trade deal with the US is testament to the patient, mediation-led approach @Keir_Starmer & his team have taken to the US over recent months. Quiet diplomacy has led the UK to the front of the queue.
In an assessment for the BBC, Faisal Islam, its economics editor, says the US-UK trade deal being announced today is “likely to be relatively small”. He says: “It’s about the rolling back of some of the trade damage done by Donald Trump’s original announcement.”
The BBC has a good guide to what the deal is likely to contain here.
