If the Prime Minister’s first effort to win
Donald Trump
around came in the form of an “unprecedented” and “historic” invitation to make a
second state visit
to the UK, the
special relationship
between the two men was cemented on Thursday by their announcement of what the President is calling “
an historic trade deal”
.
Trump hailed the agreement
as “full and comprehensive”, claiming it marked the end of a 25-year process that had created what he called a “maxed out” deal between the two countries. That claim flies in the face of his simultaneous argument that the agreement does not rise to the level of requiring Congressional approval.
The US constitution grants Congress the sole authority to regulate international trade, and while the President has some leeway to strike limited agreements on his own, members of the House and Senate may choose to argue that a “full and comprehensive” deal requires their say-so.
Sir Keir Starmer was careful to use different language, telling workers at a Jaguar Land Rover plant in the West Midlands that he had secured an “economic prosperity deal” for them to cheer. He said the agreement would safeguard thousands of jobs in the UK, particularly in the car industry after the Americans agreed to drop tariffs from 27.5 per cent to 10 per cent for the first 100,000 units exported to the US.
But even as Starmer was on his feet assuring workers that he had delivered the home team a major win, Trump was still speaking at the White House and minimising the auto industry concessions that he had made.
“We took it to…10% on Rolls Royce”, he said, “because Rolls Royce is not going to be built here…it’s a very special car, not one of the monster car companies that make millions of cars. They make a very small number of cars”. He said his tariff largesse also applied to Jaguar and Bentley, describing all three “luxury” manufacturers as producing “really hand-made stuff” for the small number of wealthy Americans who can afford them. He insisted no other country should expect to secure a similar arrangement.
There was similar dissonance between the messaging of Lord Mandelson, Britain’s Ambassador to Washington, and Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Lord Mandelson, in the Oval Office, described the agreement as “the end of the beginning” of trade negotiations between the two countries. Lutnick heaped praise on Trump for bringing the agreement over the finishing line, and insisted that the Americans had come out firmly on top.
“We feel really good about the deal”, he told reporters. .He noted that Trump’s 11th hour deal-making with Starmer, in the middle of Wednesday night’s Arsenal game, would still see the United States accruing $6bn in tariff revenues charged on UK exports. “This is the perfect example of why Donald Trump produced ‘Liberation Day’”, he beamed with a smile that suggested he thinks the President pulled a fast one on the Prime Minister.
Negotiating the agreement with Starmer took just 45 days, redolent of the fact that both men were in a hurry to get to “yes”. But huge issues remain to be ironed out, principal among them, UK market access for American agricultural products.
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Trump told reporters that he had secured American farmers “billions of dollars in increased access for beef, ethanol and virtually all of the products produced by our great farmers”. But his own Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, conceded that no final agreements had been reached, and that she will travel to London one Monday in a further effort to determine whether American beef and chlorinated chicken, currently barred from the UK, will really start appearing in the country’s supermarket chillers.
The day demonstrated that Trump urgently needed a win before he departs Washington for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates next week. Beleaguered by the country’s captains of industry, and under growing pressure from consumers to prove that his trade war really is going to create the “golden age” that he promised, Trump relished the opportunity to present positive news to the public a month after he claimed that governments worldwide were “calling us up…kissing my ass” in an effort to alleviate their tariff burdens.
Both Starmer and Mandelson emphasised the trust they had placed in Trump by advancing the negotiations and getting to “yes”.
“This shows what two countries who trust each other can do”, said Mandelson, as Trump watched and then complimented him on his “wonderful accent”. The Prime Minister and his Ambassador must now hope their trust has not been misplaced, and the Trump will not overturn the applecart when the nitty-gritty of negotiations ensues.