U.S. and Britain Hail Trade Agreement but Leave Details to Be Settled

Miami Herald

09-05-2025

EDITORS NOTE: EDS: EXPANDS graf starting "'If we're 40 days'" to clarify reference to Liberation Day; ONLY change.); (ART ADV: With photos.); (With: BRITAIN-TRADE-STARMER, BRITAIN-TRADE-ASSESS, BRITAIN-TRADE-TAKEAWAYS, BRITAIN-FILM-TARIFFS, EUROPE-U.S.-TARIFFS); Mark Landler, Eshe Nelson and Danielle Kaye contributed reporting.
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that the United States intended to sign a trade deal with Britain that would bring the two nations closer and roll back some of the punishing tariffs he issued on that country's products.
Both sides consider a trade pact deeply beneficial, and a deal has been under discussion since Trump's first term. But the announcement Thursday was still short on details, reflecting the haste of the Trump administration's efforts to negotiate with more than dozen nations and rework the global trading system in a matter of months.
The agreement, which Trump said would be the first of many, would include Britain's dropping its tariffs on U.S. beef, ethanol, sports equipment and other products, and buying $10 billion of Boeing airplanes. The United States in return said it would pare back tariffs that Trump has put on cars and steel, though it will leave a 10% levy in place for all British exports.
Neither government has said when the agreement will go into effect. Officials from both governments will need to meet in the coming months to hammer out specific language, leaving open the potential for disagreements. The British government said it was still pushing to bring down the 10% tariff on most other goods.
Nevertheless, the leaders of both nations hailed their cooperation in joint announcements Thursday that invoked the deep relationship between their countries. Speaking from the Oval Office, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain on speakerphone, Trump called it a "great deal for both countries."
Starmer noted that it was the 80th anniversary of the Allies' victory in Europe in World War II. "There are no two countries that are closer than our two countries," Starmer said. "And now we take this into new and important territory by adding trade and the economy to the closeness of our relationship."
Both British and American businesses, including U.S. cattle ranchers and dairy farmers, also praised the arrangement, though some lamented that tariffs between the two countries would remain higher than they were when Trump came into office.
The announcement comes as the United States races to finalize agreements with more than a dozen other countries eager to avoid Trump's high tariffs. U.S. officials have been negotiating with India, Israel, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, among other trading partners, for agreements that would drop tariffs between the countries.
Trump officials are also headed to Geneva this weekend to discuss trade issues with Chinese officials, amid an intense standoff that has shut off U.S. trade with China and is threatening to put many companies out of business.
Amid the festering disputes with many countries, an agreement with Britain appeared to be low-hanging fruit for the Trump administration. British officials have eyed an agreement with the United States since leaving the European Union in 2020 as a way to offset reduced trade with Europe, and Trump has pushed for a deal with Britain since his first term.
Trump, who is fixated on trade deficits, has also praised the country for having relatively balanced trade with the United States. Last month, the president imposed the same 10% global tariff on Britain that he put on other countries, but not the higher "reciprocal" tariffs that were applied to many countries that ship the United States more products.
Officials said Thursday that the agreement would leave the 10% tariff on British exports in place but roll back others that Trump has put on cars and steel. In return, Britain would offer billions of dollars of market access for American beef and other exports.
One of the most contentious issues for Britain in recent months has been the hefty tariffs Trump applied to automotive imports, which threatened British companies like Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin.
Under the terms of the new arrangement, Britain will be allowed to send 100,000 vehicles to the United States under a tariff of 10%. The British government said that any cars shipped beyond that level would face a 27.5% tariff, and that U.S. tariffs on British steel would fall to zero. Britain sent 92,000 vehicles to the United States in 2024, according to data from Oxford Economics.
U.S. firms in turn would gain more ability to sell to the British government, and streamlined customs procedures when selling into Britain, according to a White House fact sheet. In addition, the governments said they would cooperate on issues of economic security, like enacting global technology controls and setting up a secure supply chain for important products like steel and pharmaceuticals.
U.S. officials hope the deal will send a message to other American trading partners that if they agree to open up their markets, they too could see some of the tariffs Trump has applied rolled back.
Trump's defenders have praised his deal-making ability and said that the global tariffs he has issued have given him extraordinary leverage over other countries. Critics have painted the president as increasingly desperate to solve a crisis of his own making, as tariffs begin to push up U.S. prices and dampen the economy.
Wall Street welcomed the news Thursday, seeing it as a sign that the Trump administration might move to mend ties with other trade partners. The S&P 500 ended the day 0.6% higher after paring back some gains from earlier Thursday.
Rob Haworth, a senior investment strategy director at U.S. Bank Asset Management, said the market was "cheering progress on this deal." But he added, "this is clearly a market on edge, and I think we're not out of the woods yet."
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which represents ranchers, praised the deal for expanding U.S. access to the British market.
"With this trade deal, President Trump has delivered a tremendous win for American family farmers and ranchers," said Buck Wehrbein, a Nebraska cattleman who heads the group.
Other analysts were less impressed. Paul Ashworth, the chief North America economist for Capital Economics, wrote in a note that "the 'full and comprehensive' trade deal between the U.S. and the U.K. announced in a rush today by President Donald Trump and PM Keir Starmer is no such thing."
"This rush to demonstrate progress on 'deals' reveals a rising desperation within the administration to roll back tariffs before they hit GDP growth and inflation," Ashworth added.
Britain is the United States' 11th-largest trading partner in goods, representing 2.9% of total U.S. trade in the first quarter of the year. The United States sent $80 billion of machinery, airplanes, natural gas, crude oil and other products to Britain in 2024, while it bought $68 billion of cars, pharmaceuticals and other goods in return.
The United States is Britain's largest single trading partner, though most of that trade relationship is in services, which are not affected by tariffs.
The Trump administration notified Congress of its intent to negotiate a trade deal with Britain back in 2018. But the talks never got much traction in Trump's first term because of British resistance to America's chemically treated beef and chicken, as well as fears that the United States would push for American companies to gain deeper access to Britain's National Health Service.
During the Biden administration, British officials continued to advocate a trade deal but did not make much progress because of Democrats' skepticism.
In late February, at a party at the British ambassador's residence in Washington, Starmer, who was visiting, told Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick of Britain's interest in focusing on trade, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. Lutnick, who oversees a portfolio that includes U.S. trade policy, connected with his counterpart in the U.K. government, Jonathan Reynolds. British officials made clear to the Trump team they wanted to be the first country to make a deal.
Trump's special envoy to Britain, the former producer of his show "The Apprentice," Mark Burnett, was involved in the early discussions and was a proponent of trying to secure an early deal with the country.
With Lutnick focusing on the big picture and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, working through the details and execution, the governments hammered out a framework. Trump also engaged directly with Starmer, including putting in an eleventh-hour call to push for more in the agreement, the British prime minister said Thursday.
Trump liked the idea of Britain being the partner for his first deal, given the country's special relationship with the United States, and he thought the agreement would send a good signal to the world, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking. Britain is also not a major source of automobiles or steel for the United States, which helped persuade U.S. officials to drop the tariffs on those products.
The deal also provides Starmer a much-needed political victory, appearing to vindicate his strategy of cultivating a relationship with Trump.
But some analysts have noted that the agreement left many tariffs in place and skipped over more contentious issues, like opening Britain's health care market to U.S. companies, or the digital service tax that Britain has imposed on American tech firms. They suggested that trade talks with other governments that are less closely allied with the United States could be tougher to finalize.
"If we're 40 days out from Liberation Day, and the first deal and the only deal is with a country where we run a bilateral trade surplus that was not seen as a problem coming into Liberation Day, I take it as a kind of bearish signal about how difficult the next deals are going to be," said Josh Lipsky, the chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council, a think tank. (Lipsky referred to Trump's term for April 2, when the president rolled out his tariff plan. Trump later paused most of the tariffs for 90 days.)
Other industry executives expressed nervousness about the precedent that rolling back tariffs on foreign steel, aluminum and cars might set for other negotiations, or complained about the concessions being unfair for U.S. industry.
Matt Blunt, the president of the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, said his group was "very disappointed" that the administration had prioritized Britain over Canada and Mexico, which remain subject to 25% automotive tariffs and buy far more from U.S. factories.
It would now be cheaper, Blunt said, to import a car from Britain than one from Mexico or Canada that might source half its parts from the United States.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright 2025