WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 08: A poster board is seen as U.S. President Donald Trump talks with reporters in the Oval Office at the White House on May 08, 2025 in Washington, DC. During his remarks Trump spoke about a trade deal with the United Kingdom that he announced today on Truth Social. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The newly announced UK-US trade agreement under Trump is a modest, tactical rollback of recent protectionist measures rather than a true free trade deal, aimed more at political optics than economic transformation, says Eliot Wilson

Donald Trump advertised last week’s trade agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom as “full and comprehensive”, a “MAJOR TRADE DEAL” (the president’s inevitable capitalisation on his Truth Social platform) which would be “THE FIRST OF MANY!!!”. That imprimatur was enough to alert us to what the agreement was not: it is neither full nor comprehensive, and is certainly not a “free trade agreement”.

The deal announced today is not the end, but it may be, to go one step further than Churchill, the beginning of the end. What the transatlantic negotiating teams achieved was an agreement to reduce penalties and barriers in key sectors of the two countries’ economies. It undoubtedly represents trade liberalisation, but only from the protectionist heights that the........

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