UK “Shafted” by US Trade Deal

The US-UK trade deal announced today is a clear win for Trump, says Sam Ashworth-Hayes in the Telegraph, leaving the UK worse off than in March and opening up UK markets in exchange only for reducing recently imposed tariffs. Here’s an excerpt.

April’s tariffs were set to be highly damaging, and it’s good that we’ve managed to limit their impact. It’s also the case that we’re still far worse off than we were in March.

The ‘trade deal’ announced today is thin. It doesn’t lift all the tariffs introduced this year, or do anything close. Britain has negotiated reductions to the additional rates on cars and components, steel and aluminium. This is a good thing, to be clear. But it’s also the case that every other additional tariff – including the 10% baseline rate – is staying in place. The tariffs our exporters face when trying to sell to the US will still be far higher than they were just a few months ago.

In practical terms, this means that Britain will be billions worse off. By putting together data on UK exports by subcategory, US tariff rates, and trade elasticities, I’ve come up with a rough estimate of the deal’s effects. It isn’t exact – given the time constraints it can’t be – and I’ve had to make some judgment calls about which tariffs apply to which categories.

But with those caveats out of the way, my back-of-the-envelope calculation is that the April tariffs would have lowered UK exports to the US by around £12.4 billion, and the value of the remaining goods sold by about £250 million. Not all of that would be a hit to GDP – some trade would likely be redirected – but it would certainly have been a blow. The deal on beef is essentially a rounding error, with the UK exporting around £3 million per year.

Today’s deal only slightly cushions it. Cars and automobile parts are a major part of the UK’s exports to the US, so there is some positive impact. But the net effect is that between lower export volumes and lower prices, we’ll still likely be £9.5 billion worse off than we were before.

In exchange, we’ve cut existing tariffs on US beef, offered tax concessions for US tech firms, and apparently agreed to buy $10 billion worth of Boeing planes, in some form or another.

For Donald Trump, it’s a clear negotiating win. He lowered tariffs that were most likely imposed in an attempt to get other countries to fall into line, delivering a synthetic solution to an artificial crisis. In exchange, he won material concessions from Downing Street.

Worth reading in full.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch slammed the deal, tweeting that since America tripled its tariffs while Britain slashed ours, we have been “shafted”.