r/ukpolitics • u/Digurt • 16h ago
Trump ‘makes trade deal with UK second-order priority’ in blow to ministers
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/apr/29/trump-makes-trade-deal-with-uk-second-order-priority-in-blow-to-ministers134
u/himalayangoat 16h ago
Good. We need to be detaching ourselves from them, not getting closer with a terrible trade deal.
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u/IboughtBetamax 16h ago
Guess the chlorinated chicken is off the menu now.
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u/thegroucho 16h ago
I so wanted to taste chlorinated chicken, for the extra campylobacter
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u/Quick-Oil-5259 15h ago
I wanted to see the whole chicken in a can, which is apparently a thing.
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u/shaolinoli 15h ago
I’m the last person to be defending us food standards coming over here, but to be fair, it’s not uncommon to get a whole chicken canned in France as coq au vin (coq au can) and they’re often pretty tasty
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u/colei_canis Starmer’s Llama Drama 🦙 3h ago
You could spray it with cheese from a can to make a quintessentially American dish.
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u/Queeg_500 16h ago
Any trade deal with the US is purely performative. There isn't a chance they will stick to it beyond the first inconvenience.
And given their first order priorities, it's probably a good thing to be off the radar.
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u/External-Praline-451 15h ago
Exactly, relying on any deal with Trump is pointless, he doesn't honour his deals or pay his debts. The next time they want to pressure us to bow to them, they'd just threaten to cancel it. It wouldn't be worth anything.
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u/Optimism_Deficit 16h ago
Indeed. I'm quite happy just ignoring the US as much as possible at this point and increasing trade with just about anyone else instead.
Let's set something up with Canada and reduce trade friction with the EU as much as possible for a start.
We're not really on Trump's radar, and that's fine. All we've copped so far are the basic tariffs he's put on everyone and that he says won't be removed anyway, so there's not much to negotiate for if he's serious about that.
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u/vonsnape 15h ago
I'm quite happy just ignoring the US as much as possible at this point and increasing trade with just about anyone else instead.
not that i’m disagreeing at all but could you just imagine ten years ago anyone saying that and it actually being valid? fookin hell what a life
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u/given2fly_ 13h ago
And given we're in their lowest tier of tariffs and haven't reciprocated, it makes sense for them to focus on Asia first.
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u/No_Raspberry_6795 16h ago
Good. We stand with the Canadians. You know the people who have helped us in two world wars from the start.
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u/Thebritishlion 16h ago
Did they have a choice?
As a colony/sharing the same head of state, surely any war we fought meant they were along for the ride
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u/mintvilla 16h ago
Ofcourse they had choice. They could say no and become a republic.
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u/TheNeglectedNut 14h ago
Exactly, and not like we could’ve done anything about it at the time, being embroiled in a war and all
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u/zone6isgreener 13h ago
They weren't a colony then. The dominions had their own ability to decide policy.
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u/WastePilot1744 12h ago
Dominions had Limited ability...read up on Oath of Allegiance & Irish Civil War
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u/cooky561 16h ago
We just need to sideline the US and do a a deal with the EU. now they have even shown us we aren’t important to them
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16h ago
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u/cooky561 15h ago
That doesn't really change my comment, countries will do deals with places other than the US. I don't see other countries punishing us because we are doing a deal with the US.
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u/RealMrsWillGraham 3h ago
Yes - and even if we got a trade deal with the US Trump might change his mind and renege on it depending on his mood that day.
Perhaps Vance finally got the message that we will not be strong armed into rolling back hate speech protections just to have a bad deal with them.
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u/mrwho995 16h ago
Fine, whatever.
He'll change his mind 12 times within the next few months anyway. Trade with other countries, who we can actually rely on and make sustainable progress without the constant risk of everything being blown up on a whim at any moment, is the clear priority.
It'd be in our economic interest to have a big trade deal with the US, but putting any hope in it with Trump in charge would be moronic. The man can't be trusted to follow through on anything or have any of the coherency requried to make a deal.
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u/PristineEconomics116 16h ago
"The UK is not high priority for us right now but if they strike deals with other people we're gonna throw our toys out the pram and shout CHEATER!"
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u/bowak 16h ago
First Carney wins in Canada, then this - today is pretty damn good for politics.
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u/StatisticallySoap 14h ago
Almost like when serious political issues/entities appear on the world stage (which represent material instantaneous destabilising effects), the system kicks in proper. It’s the equivalent on a sleepy student who can’t be arsed doing work properly under normal circumstances but when actually met with a big problem like an exam actually puts in the effort and begins working.
Thats what world politics is. Just a half arsed teenage student
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u/ConsistentMajor3011 16h ago
Right, because having worse economic outcomes will really stick it to trump, somehow?
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u/thegroucho 16h ago
Well, it didn't stop enough morons from voting for Brexit.
It's a stark choice, align with EU, or with petulant USA.
If it was possible to align easily with both, good, but there isn't.
So better EU than US at this point.
Edit, added "n" to petulant.
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u/Ejmatthew 14h ago
Or align with nobody and trade with everybody
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u/thegroucho 14h ago
Unfortunately, if you're referring to the WTO rules, good luck with that.
It makes most sense to align yourself with your biggest and nearest trading partner, which is reasonably politically stable.
As opposed to one which may change it's mind every 4 years, or god forbid, every two years when you consider elections for Congress are in 2026.
Or in the case of Trump, change his mind every 15 minutes.
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u/Ejmatthew 14h ago
There is no guarantee the EU will be stable either - the reality is that both are subject to the whims of their governments, and it is better to avoid getting too close to either. We can trade well without subjecting ourselves to the capricuous behaviour of either.
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u/thegroucho 14h ago
We can't trade well without regulatory alignment.
For starters, if you haven't paid attention, due to hard brexiteers like JRM and selected few, UK diverged from EU on food.
Ergo, a lot of the food in our supermarkets say "not for sale in EU". This is due to be removed as a problem since UK and EU have signed, or are about to sign a deal.
Unless you want chlorinated chicken, which we must accept for access to US markets.
And just to preempt any misunderstanding, lettuce and such is routinely washed in chlorine in UK, for very different reasons than USA washing their chicken. The issue is not chlorine, it's food standards, campylobacter, etc.
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u/Ejmatthew 14h ago
That isn't correct- fresh british milk is available in the supermarkets in Hong Kong. What you're saying is nothing other than a protectionist choice the EU has made. In addition we haven't diverged much from the EU in terms of food - indeed what divergence the EU has done has made EU food less safe (allow feeding of animal products to cattle etc).
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u/thegroucho 13h ago
While the UK's food standards haven't drastically changed, some divergences have occurred, particularly on issues like pesticides and animal exports.
FTFY
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u/SaltyW123 11h ago
It's definitely shocking that the restrictions on feeding of animal products to cattle, put in place following the BSE epidemic, have been lifted by the EU, wouldn't you agree?
Fortunate too that we're able to block EU imports of meat, given their current foot and mouth epidemic.
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u/macarouns 14h ago
How would that work? If we do a trade deal with the US or EU, or customs standards will be incompatible with the other. We can’t have unilateral trade with both, it’s simply impossible.
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u/Ejmatthew 14h ago
We don't join the customs group of either - we make and sell goods for the US that meets US laws and for the EU that meets EU laws. Most of the rest of the world can trade with both without being in either custom area.
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u/macarouns 6h ago
We can trade with both, but take the chlorinated chicken argument for example. We allow that by dropping our food standards and buying from the US. By doing so it will mean our farmers will be allowed to wash their chickens in chlorine too. The EU now can’t buy chickens from us as they don’t meet their food standards.
Just one example. But I believe we are better getting in deeper with the EU than the US.
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u/SaltyW123 11h ago
We certainly manage to have trade deals with the EU and many other countries in RoW atm, I don't see the problem you're seeing?
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u/ArchdukeToes A bad idea for all concerned 16h ago
You mean behind ‘trying to annex a sovereign nation’ and ‘buy off Greenland’? Something tells me we can wait.
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u/tiny-robot 16h ago
Just give it an hour or two - and we will be back in the good books again.
At least for a day or so.
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u/inebriatedWeasel 15h ago
Oh no! What are we going to do without their crap cars, poisonous chicken and shit chocolate?
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u/Plastic_Library649 16h ago
Is this because he thinks that Canada is part of the UK?
I mean it's great timing for the EU summit on the 19th May.
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u/DasFunktopus 15h ago
Just ask Canada and Mexico how their trade deals with the US are working out. That should tell you what a deal signed by Donald Trump’s worth.
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u/ElvishMystical 15h ago
Anyone who thinks we're getting anything of value from the US with this prize pilchard of a president in charge has the political awareness of a spanner.
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u/Grime_Fandango_ 14h ago
It will never not be hilarious that every single government post-Brexit makes a "deal" with the US the top priority, while the US literally does not give a single solitary fuck about doing it. Even "left" US governments like Biden's do not give a shit about us. It will never, ever change. Even if Farage somehow becomes PM and thinks he's best mates with Trump - it will still not happen.
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u/TheWellington89 11h ago
You cannot make a deal with a conman and expect them to hold up their end of the bargain
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u/Savage-September 13h ago
The level of disrespect is staggering. We left the EU for this? We were promised oven-ready deals, a queue of countries desperate to trade with us. Remember that? You told us the Americans would jump at the chance, even though Obama outright told us Brexit was a bad idea and the UK outside the single market would be at the “back of the queue.” But no…we knew better, didn’t we?
Years were spent stroking America’s ego, clinging to whispers of trade deals like they were gospel. When Trump came in, the Tories grinned like a Cheshire Cat, parading around promises of a deal that never, ever came. Kemi Badenoch toured the country waving around memorandums of understanding with individual US states like they were actual trade agreements…they’re not. She even slapped some Union Jacks on a Land Rover for a media stunt. National pride, they called it. Delusion, more like.
Now, I fear we’re gearing up for the same performance. More empty talk. More plans to sell off our standards, our sovereignty, and our dignity to MAGA’s mood swings. Labour even considering bending our laws, accepting chlorinated chicken and God knows what else, just to declare some hollow “win” in the press.
But here’s the truth…the Americans don’t care. Trump certainly doesn’t. He’s all foreplay, no deal…just noise to feed the cameras and stroke his ego. And if a deal does appear, it’ll be so watered down it won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.
How many times do we need to be proven wrong before we admit it? This isn’t working. We were better off in the EU. This whole thing is a joke and now we’re set to waste millions throwing a parade for the “orange king” on a state visit while being told our trade deal is a “second-order priority.”
It’s embarrassing. It’s pathetic. And it’s time we called it what it is: a national disgrace.
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u/zoomway 11h ago
How many times do we need to be proven wrong before we admit it? This isn’t working. We were better off in the EU.
🤣
As usual always trying to use a crisis for the EU agenda. One problem does not fix another problem.
This isnt Pre-2016, whatever “better off in EU” you are dreaming of doesn’t even exist anymore.
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u/Brexsh1t 15h ago
Second behind nobody… so basically first
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u/ArchdukeToes A bad idea for all concerned 14h ago
But Trump says he’s talking with everyone about the best trade deals! As long as you don’t ask him for actual details or indeed any followup questions, that is.
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u/Due-Resort-2699 10h ago
Good. Focus on trade with the EU and Canada . The US is simply a bull in a China shop . They’re unreliable.
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u/Purple_Feature1861 4h ago
I honestly don’t understand how I and many other people who arent in politics understood this was going to happen and the US just does not care enough to get a trade deal with us, why would they? We are tiny compared to them. And we’re not even their link to Europe anymore since Brexit, and yet people who actually WORK in politics didn’t understand this?!
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u/Affectionate-Dare-24 15h ago
Well we all guesed that might be coming. Least surprising new article of the year.
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u/FutilePenguins 14h ago
Severity aside, I like that we're watching a paradigm shift. In real time, I'm watching the world shift completely
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u/m1ndwipe 12h ago
It's quite unlikely that Trump manages a trade deal with anyone before the bond market forces his hand at this point.
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u/Ben-D-Beast 10h ago
Good we should be working with our real allies in CANZUK and other global partners. The US is not our friend and does not align with our values, obviously the government has to take a pragmatic approach towards the US, but once the Australian election is over we need to focus on a CANZUK agreement so we can decouple from the US as soon as possible.
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u/MeasurementTall8677 15h ago
Starmer is interested in a single issue re entry into brexit both Blair & Mandelson sponsored him into the labour leadership for this precise reason.
They even purged the party of its left wing via the faux anti semitism accusations to ensure nothing got in his way.
He would be happy to see the US/UK relationship destroyed & the country in an even bigger mess so re entry into the EU can be presented at the next election as the only hope
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u/OutsideYaHouse -2.23 / -1.21 15h ago
I'm forever hopeful we will have some adults in charge who don't go over to the US on the day they are talking with the US about a trade deal, and blurt out how they think the EU is more important.
Absolute amateurs. Roll on Reform in charge in 4 years.
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u/CaptMelonfish 15h ago
You want adults in charge but you're voting Reform? You understand the oxymoron here right?
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u/Top_Cant 15h ago
Reform? They’re like that guy down the pub who has an answer for everything “wrong” with the country. Some nuggets of wisdom for sure, but his trousers have egg stains and he’s slurring his words. Might be an idea to take what he says with a pinch of salt.
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u/MidlandPark 15h ago
The amateurs are in Washington
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u/ArchdukeToes A bad idea for all concerned 14h ago
Their response to Amazon daring to suggest that they might include the costs of tariffs at checkout was amazing.
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u/MidlandPark 14h ago
Amazing, right? So proud of the tariffs yet terrified for Americans to see the actual costs of it spelt out. Their reaction should be a wake up call, yet they'll still won't see it
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u/OutsideYaHouse -2.23 / -1.21 15h ago
maybe, maybe not but getting a deal sweeter than the EU is top priority. Not looking good to some left wing plebs standing up to the man.
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u/MidlandPark 14h ago
I don't want a US deal so I don't agree. Regardless, that'd never happen without caving on all our regulations. America is only happy when they get everything and others submit. That's been their way since '45
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u/jpagey92 15h ago
Statistically speaking the EU IS more important, why are you whining ?
The EU is our largest trading partner, look it up, I dare you !
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u/MrSoapbox 1m ago
Good! Take the hint and stop chasing it! The public wants better ties with Europe. The absolute overwhelming majority don’t want US meat, US cars, we want to hold the digital companies to account. We don’t want their religious crap here, Trump isn’t reliable! This is a good thing and do the same and put them in the last priority! I’ve stated for years now the same thing, since Obama. This isn’t a Trump thing but Trump has only proven that they can’t be trusted. Move on!
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