During a White House press conference late Thursday morning, May 8, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a new trade deal with the U.K. Trump was joined by visiting U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer — leader of the Labour Party since 2020 — as well as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Vice President JD Vance as he bragged that the arrangement will be a source of great prosperity for both the United States and Great Britain.
The arrangement, Trump told reporters, will bring increased market access to the U.K. for U.S. exports ranging from beef to ethanol. But Trump critics are describing the deal as big on hype but painfully short on specifics.
During the presser, Sky News’ James Matthews was highly skeptical about the deal — telling Trump, “I’d like to ask, why Britain, and why now?…. Clearly, there’s much more work still to do. With respect, are you overstating the reach and significance of this deal because you’re a president who needs a result at a difficult time?”
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Trump responded, “I think that it’s a great deal for both parties. It’s for us. We’re opened up. I didn’t know how closed it was. Quite closed, the market, as you know, the U.K. And it opens up a tremendous market for us, and it works out very well, very well…. And a lot of assets, you see the chart, and those are tremendous assets. But we’ve been trying, and when you say why us, meaning your country — we’ve been trying for years, and they’ve been trying for years to make a deal, including when I was in the, you know, first term. It would always be people talking, but they weren’t getting it done. But for 25 years before that, they were trying always to make a deal. A very significant deal.”
After the press conference came at a time, MSNBC got a reaction from Democratic attorney Gene Sperling — who served as director of the National Economic Council (NEC) under Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and was White House coordinator for the American Rescue Plan under President Joe Biden.
Sperling slammed the U.K. deal as a “very marginal trade agreement” that underscores the “incoherence of the Trump trade policy,” telling MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera, “You had an economy that was a consensus soft landing….. Now, you have consensus fears of a recession and stagflation.”
Trump’s exchange with Matthews is drawing a lot of responses on X, formerly Twitter.
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CPCG founder Karen Hinks tweeted, “We need to see this ‘deal’ for the performative theatre for what it is. Which is nothing. Trump needed a win. He needed a way out for the destruction his fool-hardy tariffs are causing this country. Pathetic.”
Raven Capital investment manager Nelson Rangel argued, “UK temporary deal is all a show to get people to prop up the market for presidential approval ratings, to give (Treasury Secretary Scott) Bessent a bigger cushion ahead to China meeting on Saturday and for insiders to sell stocks at a better prices… *TRUMP: BETTER GO OUT AND BUY STOCKS NOW.”
Canada-based X user David Blakely posted, “Sounds like a win for the UK and that Trump has caved in favour of UK workers. Trump needed a distraction today and there was no trade imbalance with the UK. No surprise the way Trump and the fawning Lutnick are positioning this. Trade still moving away from US, and quickly.”
Paris-based professor Matthew Fraser, a former journalist, commented, “Sounds half-baked. They are still negotiating but Trump wanted a big ‘win’ to announce, so they staged this press conference.”
Attorney Joe Gallina’s Call to Activism tweeted, “MASSIVE LET DOWN: Donald Trump admits his ‘huge trade deal’ with the UK is NOT finalized yet and instead is only a concept of a plan. This is extremely embarassing in light of the press hype. Art of the deal.”
Trader Ben Calusinski @BCalusinski wrote, “Trump is really trying to push how ‘Big’ this deal with the UK is. The market does not care When the market has to price in a ‘Big Deal’ with a gap-up and then he doesn’t follow through, we will see it sell I don’t make the rules.”
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