The truth is there was nothing to open in the first place. We traded freely and equally with the US until Trump unleashed his tariff blitz on April 2.
While Trump has raged at Europe, claiming yet a conspiracy against the US, he couldn’t say that about the UK.
The EU had a €198billion (£168billion) trade surplus with the US last year. By contrast, the UK and US are evenly balanced. After today, that won’t be the case. Trump will guzzle us down.
He was all smiles and kind words claiming: “There are no countries that are closer than our two countries. We’ve always had a fair and balanced relationship.”
He added: “This deal just fell into place.”
Or to be more precises, PM Keir Starmer fell into place. He’s succumbed to a pretty wretched deal.
By some calculations, rather than giving the UK economy a desperately needed boost, it’ll cost us £10billion a year.
We’re still picking over the details, but a chart displayed in the Oval Office gave off a nasty whiff.
It suggested the US has trebled its tariffs on the UK under Trump. While we’ve more than halved ours.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the country had been “shafted” and it’s hard to disagree.
There were some good bits. Trump’s mooted 25% tariffs on steel British steel exports to the US will be slashed to zero.
We exported £370million worth last year, so I guess that’s something.
Luxury car makers such as Range Rover and Aston Martin were threatened with 25% tariffs.
Now they’ve been given a quota of 100,000 a year that will be charged at 10%. That’s better than 25% but remember, before we paid nothing.
In return for excluding British-made Rolls-Royce aircraft engines from US tariffs, the UK has somehow pledged to buy £10billion worth of Boeing aircraft.
How Starmer can promise to buy aircraft, we don’t yet know.
Nor do we know whether Britain’s mighty pharmaceutical companies, AstraZeneca and Glaxo, will be spared drugs tariffs. Trump seems to be stalling on that.
He has waived tariffs on our beef exports, but since they’re only worth £3million a year that’s scraps. And I dread to think which food standards we have surrendered in return.
Starmer was easy meat for Trump. By lowering tariffs that he only invented last month he created a fake crisis that rattled the PM into concessions.
No wonder Trump was beaming. And no wonder he got the deal over the line so quickly, because why wouldn’t he?
Trump thinks lavishing Brits with praise will make us feel better. Chances are we won’t be smiling when we tuck into the details of the deal.
Which isn’t really a deal anyway, more of a stitch-up.
While the PM can claim the glory of drawing up the first trade deal with Trump, that could backfire.
If subsequent trade deals turn out to be more generous, it will expose his negotiating weakness.
Heaven help us when Starmer deals with the EU. Who knows what he’ll give away then.