The US and the UK are expected to announce a trade deal

The US and the UK are expected to announce today that they have struck a trade deal that will reduce the burden of Donald Trump's tariffs.

The agreement brings political success to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, but it can also be used by Trump to show that his policies are working.

No details are yet available, and the deal is likely to be limited to providing tax breaks to certain sectors such as the automotive industry. Starmer, speaking at a defence conference in London, said negotiations with the US were ongoing and that he would speak more about it later today.

It would be the first bilateral trade deal since Trump raised taxes in an attempt to boost domestic manufacturing. New deals have yet to be reached with America's biggest trading partners, such as Canada, Mexico and China.

However, Trump promised today that there are "many other deals that are in serious negotiation stages."

The US and the UK have been trying to strike a bilateral trade deal since the British voted to leave the EU in 2016. Negotiations began in 2020, during Trump's first term. But talks slowed under Biden. Negotiations resumed after Trump returned to office in January.

The British's main goal was to reduce or even eliminate tariffs on British car and steel imports, which Trump raised to 25 percent. The United States is the largest market for British cars, accounting for more than a quarter of car exports in 2024.

Britain has also sought tariff relief for pharmaceuticals, while the US wants greater access to the British agricultural market, but Starmer's government has said it will not lower UK food standards to allow chlorine-washed American chicken or hormone-treated beef.

The British government will see the deal as a confirmation of Starmer's soft approach to Trump, which has avoided direct confrontation. Unlike the EU, Britain has not imposed retaliatory tariffs on American goods in response to Trump's tariffs.

But the agreement would do little to address Trump's concerns about chronic trade deficits that have led him to impose import tariffs on countries around the world.

The US had a trade surplus with the UK of $11,9 billion last year, while the $68 billion in goods the US imported from Britain last year accounted for only 2 percent of all goods imported into the country.

And the US is much more important to Britain's economy. It was Britain's biggest trading partner last year, according to government statistics, even though the bulk of British exports to the US are services, not goods.

A trade deal with the US is just one of several that Starmer's government wants to strike. On Tuesday, Britain and India struck a trade deal after three years of negotiations. The UK is also trying to remove some of the barriers to trade with the EU imposed when Britain left the bloc in 2020.