This statement was issued by the White House yesterday on the UK/US trade deal, about which a great deal of uncertainty remains:
- President Trump: “The deal includes billions of dollars of increased market access for American exports, especially in agriculture, dramatically increasing access for American beef, ethanol, and virtually all of the products produced by our great farmers.”
- “The UK will reduce or eliminate numerous non-tariff barriers that unfairly discriminated against American products.”
- “This is now turning out to be, really, a great deal for both countries.”
- Prime Minister Starmer: “This is going to boost trade between and across our countries. It's going to not only protect jobs, but create jobs, opening market access.”
- This trade deal will significantly expand U.S. market access in the UK, creating a $5 billion opportunity for new exports for U.S. farmers, ranchers, and producers.
- This includes more than $700 million in ethanol exports and $250 million in other agricultural products, like beef.
- It commits the countries to work together to enhance industrial and agricultural market access.
- It closes loopholes and increases U.S. firms' competitiveness in the UK's procurement market.
- It ensures streamlined customs procedures for U.S. exports.
- It establishes high standard commitments in the areas of intellectual property, labor, and environment.
- It maximizes the competitiveness and secures the supply chain of U.S. aerospace manufacturers through preferential access to high-quality UK aerospace components.
- It creates a secure supply chain for pharmaceutical products.
- The reciprocal tariff rate of 10%, as originally announced on Liberation Day, is in effect.
- The United States will agree to an alternative arrangement for the Section 232 tariffs on UK autos.
- Under the deal, the first 100,000 vehicles imported into the U.S. by UK car manufacturers each year are subject to the reciprocal rate of 10% and any additional vehicles each year are subject to 25% rates.
- The United States also recognizes the economic security measures taken by the UK to combat global steel excess capacity and will negotiate an alternative arrangement to the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum.
- This deal creates a new trading union for steel and aluminum.
- This U.S.-UK trade deal will usher in a golden age of new opportunity for U.S. exporters and level the playing fields for American producers.
What does all this mean? The honest answer is, who knows?
What we do know is:
- The 10 per cent tariff Trump imposed in April remains in place
- Tariffs are reduced on steel, aluminium and cars.
- The UK has to accept US beef, ethanol and other products.
- We may have increased US access to the NHS and other public services.
So, we can conclude:
- The UK gave away a lot to avoid a threat of tariffs on British-made luxury cars.
- So far, we have avoided giving away Digital Services Tax revenues, but it seems likely that is still on the table.
- It is likely that the competitive position of UK-based suppliers to the UK government has been harmed.
- The protection of British agriculture and the quality of our food has been undermined.
And all that to leave us in a worse position than we were in on 1 April.
If this is what a good deal looks like, I suggest someone should tell Starmer that sometimes (by which I mean, usually, or even always) no deal is better than a bad deal, because that is what he's got.
Last July, my most basic hope was that Starmer might arrest the decline in the quality of British Prime Ministers. I now realise my hope was misplaced. Starmer now ranks alongside Johnson for incompetence. He may not have challenged Truss as yet. But, give him time. Things are definitely getting worse.
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As the Guardian remarks “ the UK still faces significantly higher trade barriers than before Trump swept to power, determined to tear up the system. In effect, the president has stolen everyone’s lunch money – and is now exacting concessions in exchange for giving a portion of it back.”
Watching MSNBC yesterday an economic commentator said:
1. yes a result; but
2. the US has a trade surplus with the UK;
3. in terms of ranking in trade the UK is eighth behind Switzerland;
4. the big question for the US is what is going to happen with the top three countries China, Canada and Mexico.
The US regards the UK as a win win market to be further and fully exploited.
Agreed
Another disgraceful blunder by Starmer. I think he is the worst prime minister we have had for a long time and is worse than Truss – the effects of what he is doing are slowly appearing as distinct from Truss where it was more immediate. As for banging on about creating financial stability by cutting WFA does he not realise how stupid and inane he sounds – probably not! He is laying the grounds for Farage to become the next PM. Labour bleating on about how bad that would be will be ignored as they are equally culpable of destroying everything.
I choked on my dinner when I saw Mandelson to the right of Trump and when he opened his trap and used his best faux Churchillian gravitas to speak…………I knew we’d been sold down the river.
Will US beef contain hormones and genetically modified material, and if so, will we be told?
Americans on Bluesky have already posted about this – yes.
Government says no.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89pw3j7z9zo
They’re putting their faith in border checks and threatening “‘consequences’ for anyone breaking the law.” But as one of the other quotes says, “our border checks are barely functioning.”
I’m just glad I’m a vegetarian!
No. Its already been made clear that the US will not accept labelling that is any more than, ‘produce of the USA’. This of course, brings us directly into conflict with the EU, where rubbish US produce is prohibited.
If you’re not told what’s in it, won’t buy it.
Ethanol.
Grangemouth was the last chemical plant producing ethanol (180,000 tonnes p.a.). Ethanol production is important in pharmaceuticals; and production is apparently growing in the US and Brazil. Grangemouth was one of the last two production centres in Europe. But the worst of this decision is when you begin examining the reasons for closure (see below). Reasons British Government should fix, but don’t. Instead they do a special deal to save steel and sacrifice chemicals to placate Donald Trump, and protect the Labour Party. Most important is the complete and utter mess British Governments have made of energy policy.
Ironically, a good source for the reasons for this mess is Ineos itself. This is self-inflected. Britain is destroying itself. Look beyond the special pleading. This didn’t need to happen; if not with Ratcliffe, then elsewhere. Instead we are handing easy money to Trump.
Ineos website, titled ‘Chemicals coming to an end in the UK’ (2025):
“Lack of energy strategy and high carbon taxes continue to de-industrialise Britain
INEOS closes last remaining synthetic ethanol plant in the UK with the loss of several hundred jobs.
High energy prices and high carbon taxes have forced the closure of this strategic UK asset.
The UK, which used to be a major force in chemicals, employing a large and highly skilled workforce, has seen the closure of 10 large chemical complexes in the last 5 years alone and, in complete contrast to the USA, has not had one new chemical plant built for a generation.
Energy prices have doubled in the UK in the last 5 years and now stand five times higher than those in the USA. The UK cannot compete with such a huge disadvantage.
The synthetic alcohol, which is essential for the manufacture of many pharmaceutical drugs, is necessary for many of the new blockbuster drugs. It will now be imported.
The Scottish ethanol plant in Grangemouth is one of only 2 in Europe and since the start of production over 40 years ago, has produced the equivalent of 25 billion bottles of Scottish whisky.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Chairman of INEOS says, “De-industrialising Britain achieves nothing for the environment. It merely shifts production and emissions elsewhere. The UK, and particularly the North, needs high quality manufacturing and the associated manufacturing jobs. We are witnessing the extinction of one of our major industries as chemical manufacture has the life squeezed out of it.”
Thanks
Complimentary to your blog, Richard, well worth watching Nicole Wallace’s interview with Prof Scott Galloway. I don’t normally watch Nicole – although she’s very good (has held quite senior positions in the pre Trump Republican Party).
The segments are the top two, with the second being the first part of the interview. The first segment mainly covers the Trump kleptocracy – which, as Galloway says – would make Putin blush. The second (the top in the list) continues on corruption and why the Democrats lost the election but also deals with the topic of the alienation of young men in the US (also relevant here), as this was one of the groups that pivoted from the Democrats to Trump and delivered that victory. Well worth 21 minutes of anyone’s time.
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house
Thanks, Ivan
From Freddie Hayward of The New Statemans:
“Remember the American author Denny Ludwell’s line from 1930: “We were Britain’s colony once, she will be our colony before she’s done. Not in name, but in fact. But we shan’t make Britain’s mistake: too wise to govern the world, we shall merely own it.”
The government is, therefore, gripped by short-termism. Dodging black holes five years from now incentivises hawking British assets. A hunger for quick wins can lead to dangerous bargains, with little room left for figuring out what type of economy they want to build. Everything is mitigation, in other words, and the trade deal with the US is only the latest example.”
While other UK publications seem tp be praising the deal, The National and The New Statesman are actually stating what it really is and calling a spade, a spade or more precisely “A Dangerous Relationship”,
Link to complete article: https://morningcall.substack.com/p/morning-call-the-dangerous-relationship?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=lmwbc&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Much to agree with
There is more to it than trade on the British side, or WWII. America was Britain’s golden future; it was going to solve the inescapable contradictions that was Britain; an illusion sponsored by mercantilism and given intellectual credibility by John Locke. It ended abruptly in 1776, and Britain is still not over it. The Empire is over but not the attenuated ghost of the American dream.
The Trumpian rapid deconstruction of the American built, and guaranteed world order is hard for non-Americans to understand, or the harsh and immediate penalties sought and exacted on old and reliable allies and friends; but not on less reliable non-allies and non-friends; but the real problem in the yet unformed new order is the fact that in Britain the fixed orthodoxy remains in Government and Bank of England, that Britain is an “open trading nation” and is operating in an open trading world. It isn’t. Britain can do as many deals as it is capable of (not many or in depth, the real talent and fully resourced, long established, experienced personnel for doing deals is all in the EU, and there it largely remains); but the major world economic powers are lining up to remind us that we do not live in an open trading world. India and the US have just reminded with deals we have done that give us narrow access, but a terrain of hight tariffs. China and India have built their success not just on cheap labour (or now, lots of skilled talent) but protectionism and high tariffs. China has long used its currency, the renmenbi, as a form of protectionism. The idea that we have lived in an open trading world is a gross oversimplification; which the Governor of the Bank of England repeated yesterday about the US trade deal, and others to come, as if it is Holy Writ.
This is an extraordinary failure of understanding, but I suppose you have to say that if you have spent your life helping British Governments destroy the British economy and the future in zealous pursuit of a delusion.
John
I am intrigued by this:
“America was Britain’s golden future; it was going to solve the inescapable contradictions that was Britain; an illusion sponsored by mercantilism and given intellectual credibility by John Locke. It ended abruptly in 1776, and Britain is still not over it. The Empire is over but not the attenuated ghost of the American dream.”
I see Locke’s ideas as fuelling the separation, and then, much later, the supposed reconciliation and so-called special relationship.
I entirely agree with you on the trade mythology, and also that to some extent Trump is now challenging the mythology of Locke in the US, but why that first para?
It is something I am working on just now. The importance of America in Locke has been well established, for example in and the significance of Locke in American thought is long recognised by American historians; currently, Claire Arcenas, ‘America’s Philosopher’ is a recent contribution (see also, Thomas Pangle, Michael Zuckhart). This is contested ground (JGA Pocock and the Cambridge School), however on whether this is the ‘real’ Locke; the argument goes back to the Linguistic Turn and its effects (which is what i am interested in). The source of the contentious issue is the meaning and interpretation of Locke’s ‘Second Treatise of Government’.
Whatever Locke ‘really’ meant, the interpretations extracted from the ‘Second Treatise’ in the US has had an enormous impact on American political and legal thought (note that Locke was a leading authority in England on America, and was involved in drafting the formative ‘Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina’, which sit curiously with the Second treatise – more contention); on ideas of liberty, property and the development of America. See also the Scots-Canadian Barbara Arneil, ‘John Locke and America’, and the British historian, David Armitage, ‘The Ideological Origins of the British Empire’. Crucial elements in this are Locke’s theory of property, his approach to Native Americans, and to slaves and slavery. Suffice to say, I think the Linguistic Turn is beginning to age with more recent developments in neuroscience since Austin and Wittgenstein (interoception), linguistics and semiotics, philosophy – and crucially developments towards rigorous interdisciplinarity.
I have missed mercantilism. It begins with the formation of Charter companies (Elizabethan – and still exists with the BBC for anyone who thinks it dies with Adam Smith. It outlived him). I must stop there.
This will require more thinking….
“I see Locke’s ideas as fuelling the separation, and then, much later, the supposed reconciliation and so-called special relationship.”
This goes back to Locke’s intentions, and the independence of the ideas he creates. Mercantalism (Charter companies – and privateering, which is free enterprise piracy with no attribution of Government involvement), sought to advance national interest. The problem is the ideas take flight in the secretive, loose and ill-formed way Britain does its business; hence, the prospect of independence for America can thrive, and a Charter company governing India (complete with private army). The problem, if I may borrow crudely from Armitage; Britain had no theory of Empire.
It had John Locke’s theories, disgruntled dissenters with few fond memories of British government, left to hazard the prospects in America; and the free enterprise privateers (often soldiers, sailors back from British/European wars with no prospects in Britain because property, politics and prospects were sewn up tight; dangerously under employed for the comfort of government, and induced to go out as free enterprise operatives to advance the national reach, sink or swim, but without formal government attribution or responsibility for the failures); driven by the suchas the economics of william Petty, or what is now termed the aspirations of a latent ‘fiscal-military state'(John Brewer, ‘The Sinews of Power’). What could go wrong?
That’s neat, John.
[…] By Richard Murphy, Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School and a director of the Corporate Accountability Network. Originally published at Funding the Future […]
Sorry to be still stuck in yesterday, but I just want to say that it’s extremely likely that, when the US appears to be making concessions to the UK in the upcoming negotiations, they will only be to benefit the large, and growing number of UK companies who are owned, or partly owned by US entities, with all the loss of sovereignty that this implies. This will be on the back of extensive pressure and lobbying around softening up UK regulations and standards, threats of the use of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses in arbitration claims, and so on. One to watch.
I don’t really look at this as a full-on trade deal but more of an anti-tarrif deal. It’s worth noting that ,although Trump might believe the US is importing Rolls Royce cars the Mini is the most popular possibly followed by Range Rover or whatever it’s called. The analogy , and I think a very close one , is an industrial dispute were the workforce has been locked out . It’s the job of the union convenor to get those gates back open and if possible do so with the work force on as near the same terms as when they shut. People in the area I live in , who have a proper job and earn very good money, were going to be laid-off this weekend , which would have effected all local businesses, but now still have a job. Same for the folks in Scunthorpe. How is that not a good thing on balance ?
It can only be a good thing ‘on balance’ if the other side of the scale is taken into consideration. Saving jobs for people is a Good Thing, but if the cost is the destruction of many more other jobs, it may be a Bad Thing. For example the chemical works at Grangemouth?
Ineos closed the Grangemouth site last week, it’s my understanding from Mark Lyon (If you don’t run they can’t chase you by Neil Findlay) that Ineos have been running Grangemouth down for a number of years. It’s no surprise that the site has closed. I imagine that the Scottish government don’t have the power to nationalise the plant , even if they wanted to . Westminster lack the political appetite for such a move being very much stuck on , the more you do of what you’re doing the more you’ll get of what you’ve got track , with regard to public ownership and austerity. It is a pity that Grangemouth has closed but I don’t think that it’s a reason to deflect from the fact that today the workers at Rolls-Royce would have already have been laid-off if this , as I call it , anti-tariff deal hadn’t happened . The workers at Scunthorpe are also a bit more secure and it’s my understanding that the UNITE reps at the plant are reasonably pleased .
I think you are wholly missing the point here. Short term pragamtism with a fascist, who has got what he wants, really does not help.