Sunday, April 13, 2025
UK warned on trade concessions
The Independent adds that an adviser to the US president said it would take an “extraordinary deal” for the UK to improve on the 10 per cent tariff Mr Trump has placed on the country.
The paper says that UK ministers appear to be increasingly downbeat about the prospect of a US-UK deal, with health minister Stephen Kinnock admitting that it might take some time, despite officials previously insisting that talks were at an “advanced stage”:
It is understood that there is more appetite and optimism from UK officials to chase lower trade barriers with other countries instead.
It comes after economists on Thursday warned the prime minister he must accelerate cooperation with other leading economies because the US, under Mr Trump, had shown itself to be an unreliable trade partner.
The US president was forced to delay tariffs above his base rate of 10 per cent, which affects the UK, for 90 days, after days of market turmoil that sparked a fire sale of US government bonds. However, he later warned higher rates would return if countries were unable to strike fresh deals with the US.
Asked about hopes the UK could escape the baseline tariff, Mr Evenett warned: “I just haven't seen any signal from [the Trump administration] that they're willing to contemplate that. And the same is true on in the sensitive sectors [for aluminium, steel and cars], getting the tariffs below 25 per cent.”
“[The UK government] is stuck between a rock and a hard place on this stuff…. I think we're probably going to have to resign ourselves to the fact that it's a 10 per cent tariff going forward.”
He also warned that the US could prevent the UK from doing trade deals with other countries as part of an agreement – something he dubbed a “poison pill”.
“There is a risk, if one goes down the road of negotiating something with the US, that they put strings on who the UK can trade with, and this, of course, will all be about decoupling and de-risking from China.
“So I think that if we don’t pay a domestic price in terms of liberalising or deregulating health and safety standards and agriculture [the US] seems to so desperately want, then the price would have to be there.”
The papers also quotes King’s College London economist Jonathan Portes who has warned that any agreement with the US would primarily be a matter of “damage limitation”, rather than offering major upsides.
Are these trade talks already a busted flush? Would we not be better standing up to Trump as Canada has, instead of trying to soft soap him?
