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Donald Trump is expected to announce on Thursday that the US will strike a trade agreement with the UK, according to a person familiar with the matter, which would mark the first deal for the White House since it imposed sweeping tariffs against trading partners last month.
The specifics of the trade deal were not immediately clear and there was no comment from the UK on whether a trade deal had been agreed. Analysts said it was unclear if a final agreement had been reached, or if the countries would announce a framework that would be subject to further negotiation.
Trump teased that he would be making an announcement from the Oval Office at 10am ET (3pm BST) but did not disclose the country or the terms.
“Big news conference tomorrow morning at 10:00am, the Oval Office, concerning a MAJOR TRADE DEAL WITH REPRESENTATIVES OF A BIG, AND HIGHLY RESPECTED, COUNTRY. THE FIRST OF MANY!!!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
The US has been in talks with the UK for weeks as both sides sought to reach a quick deal, discussing lowering British tariffs on US cars and farm products, as well as lowering British taxes on US technology companies, the person said.
Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, has ruled out reducing food production standards to enable more trade of US agricultural products, as officials prioritise signing a separate agreement with the EU, which is likely to align British standards with European ones.
A team of senior British trade negotiators landed in Washington on Wednesday as talks over a deal between the two countries gathered pace.
Officials from the UK business and trade department were attempting to get an agreement signed before a planned UK-EU summit on 19 May.
UK officials say they are targeting tariff relief on a narrow range of sectors in order to get a deal agreed before they begin formal negotiations with the EU over a separate European agreement. A draft deal handed to the US a week ago would have reduced tariffs on British exports of steel, aluminium and cars, in return for a lower rate of the digital services tax, which is paid by a handful of large US technology companies.
Timothy C. Brightbill, an international trade attorney at Wiley Rein, told the New York Times that the announcement would probably be “just an agreement to start the negotiations, identifying a framework of issues to be discussed in the coming months.”
The Trump administration had imposed bruising tariffs on a number of trading partners on 2 April – on what the president dubbed “Liberation Day” – before partially reversing course after a sharp downturn in the US equity and, later, the bond markets.
The UK was not hit with reciprocal tariffs because the US has a trade surplus, where it sells more to the UK than it buys. But the UK has been affected, like every other country, by the 10% global tariff and the 25% tariff on foreign steel, aluminium and automobiles.
UK government sources previously said the recent announcement by the US president, Donald Trump, of film industry tariffs had proved a significant setback in trade talks.
