The United States and United Kingdom announced a “breakthrough” trade deal on Thursday that will lift some (but not all) U.S. tariffs on British goods. Both U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer heralded the agreement as a vital step toward improving trade relations.
“We are the first country to secure such a deal with the United States, and in an era of global insecurity and instability, that is so important,” Starmer said on Thursday. This is the first trade deal that the United States has reached since the White House’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs wreaked havoc on global stock markets last month and raised fears of a U.S. recession.
Under the framework agreement, Washington will lift 25 percent levies on British steel and aluminum, cut duties on almost all British car imports from 27.5 percent to 10 percent, and allow Rolls-Royce engines and plane parts to enter tariff-free. In return, U.S. companies will have better market access to British beef, ethanol, and other farm products worth around $5 billion; and London will commit to purchasing $10 billion worth of Boeing planes.
Notably, though, Trump’s baseline 10 percent reciprocal duty on most British goods will remain in place.
“The U.S.-U.K. skinny deal is a modest improvement compared to the reality before its announcement,” Ryan Bourne, an economist at the Cato Institute, told FP’s World Brief. “But with most U.S. tariffs still in place and a fairly narrow overall scope of the deal, we remain in a less free trading environment than the pre-Trump status quo and a far worse situation than if this was a comprehensive free trade agreement.”
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