UK and US have agreed terms for trade deal, Sky News understands
The US and UK have agreed the terms for a trade deal, Sky News understands.
A government source has told Sky’s deputy political editor Sam Coates that initial reports about the agreement in The New York Times are correct.
Coates says he understands a “heads of terms” agreement, essentially a preliminary arrangement, has been agreed which is a “substantive” step towards a full deal.
Three sources familiar with the reported plans had earlier told the New York Times that the US president will announce on Thursday that the UK and US will agree a trade deal.
Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to “deliver security and renewal for our country” ahead of an expected announcement on a US trade deal.
Speaking to the London defence conference, Sir Keir said: “Talks with the US have been ongoing and you’ll hear more from me about that later today.
“But make no mistake, I will always act in our national interest, for workers, businesses and families, to deliver security and renewal for our country.”
Shortly after the report emerged the value of the British pound rose by 0.4% against the US dollar.
Mr Trump had earlier teased that he would be announcing a major trade deal in the Oval Office at 10am local time (3pm UK time) on Thursday without specifying which country it had been agreed with.
Writing in a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, he said the news conference announcing the deal would be held with “representatives of a big, and highly respected, country”.
He did not offer more details but said the announcement would be the “first of many”.
A White House spokesperson has declined to comment on the New York Times report.
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Senior Trump officials have been engaging in a flurry of meetings with trading partners since the US president announced his “liberation day” tariffs on both the US’ geopolitical rivals and allies on 2 April.
Mr Trump imposed a 10% tariff on most countries including the UK during the announcement, along with higher “reciprocal” tariff rates for many trading partners.
However those reciprocal tariffs were later suspended for 90 days.
Britain was not among the countries hit with the higher reciprocal tariffs because it imports more from the US than it exports there.
However, the UK was still impacted by a 25% tariff on all cars and all steel and aluminium imports to the US.
A UK official said on Tuesday that the two countries had made good progress on a trade deal that would likely include lower tariff quotas on steel and cars.
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Mr Trump said the same day that he and top administration officials would review potential trade deals with other countries over the next two weeks to decide which ones to accept.
Last week he said that he has “potential” trade deals with India, South Korea and Japan.
Asked on Sky News’ Breakfast programme about the UK-EU summit on 19 May and how Mr Starmer would balance relationships with the US and EU, Coates said: “I think it is politically helpful for Keir Starmer to have got the heads of terms, the kind of main points of a US-UK trade deal, nailed down before we see what we have negotiated with the EU — or, more importantly, Donald Trump sees what we have negotiated with the EU.”
Coates said there was “always a danger” that if it happened the other way around, Mr Trump would “take umbrage” at negotiations with the EU and “downgrade, alter or put us further back in the queue” when it came to a UK-US trade deal.
US and Chinese officials to discuss trade war
It comes as the US and China have been engaged in an escalating trade war since Mr Trump took office in January.
The Trump administration has raised tariffs on Chinese goods to 145% while Beijing has responded with levies of 125% in recent weeks.
US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and US trade representative Jamieson Greer are set to meet their Chinese counterparts in Switzerland this week to discuss the trade war.
China has made the de-escalation of the tariffs a requirement for trade negotiations, which the meetings are supposed to help establish.
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Politics
Norman Tebbit: Former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government dies aged 94
Norman Tebbit, the former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government, has died at the age of 94.
Lord Tebbit died “peacefully at home” late on Monday night, his son William confirmed.
One of Mrs Thatcher’s most loyal cabinet ministers, he was a leading political voice throughout the turbulent 1980s.
He held the posts of employment secretary, trade secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative party chairman before resigning as an MP in 1992 after his wife was left disabled by the Provisional IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
He considered standing for the Conservative leadership after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation in 1990, but was committed to taking care of his wife.
Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit in 1987 after her election victory. Pic: PA
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called him an “icon” in British politics and was “one of the leading exponents of the philosophy we now know as Thatcherism”.
“But to many of us it was the stoicism and courage he showed in the face of terrorism, which inspired us as he rebuilt his political career after suffering terrible injuries in the Brighton bomb, and cared selflessly for his wife Margaret, who was gravely disabled in the bombing,” she wrote on X.
“He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised. Our nation has lost one of its very best today and I speak for all the Conservative family and beyond in recognising Lord Tebbit’s enormous intellect and profound sense of duty to his country.
“May he rest in peace.”
Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret stand outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Pic: PA
Tory grandee David Davis told Sky News Lord Tebbit was a “great working class Tory, always ready to challenge establishment conventional wisdom for the bogus nonsense it often was”.
“He was one of Thatcher’s bravest and strongest lieutenants, and a great friend,” Sir David said.
“He had to deal with the agony that the IRA visited on him and his wife, and he did so with characteristic unflinching courage. He was a great man.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage said Lord Tebbit “gave me a lot of help in my early days as an MEP”.
He was “a great man. RIP,” he added.
Lord Tebbit as employment secretary in 1983 with Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Born to working-class parents in north London, he was made a life peer in 1992, where he sat until he retired in 2022.
Lord Tebbit was trade secretary when he was injured in the Provisional IRA’s bombing in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in 1984.
Five people died in the attack and Lord Tebbit’s wife, Margaret, was left paralysed from the neck down. She died in 2020 at the age of 86.
Before entering politics, his first job, aged 16, was at the Financial Times where he had his first experience of trade unions and vowed to “break the power of the closed shop”.
He then trained as a pilot with the RAF – at one point narrowly escaping from the burning cockpit of a Meteor 8 jet – before becoming the MP for Epping in 1970 then for Chingford in 1974.
Lord Tebbit during an EU debate in the House of Lords in 1997. Pic: PA
As a cabinet minister, he was responsible for legislation that weakened the powers of the trade unions and the closed shop, making him the political embodiment of the Thatcherite ideology that was in full swing.
His tough approach was put to the test when riots erupted in Brixton, south London, against the backdrop of high rates of unemployment and mistrust between the black community and the police.
He was frequently misquoted as having told the unemployed to “get on your bike”, and was often referred to as “Onyerbike” for some time afterwards.
What he actually said was he grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father who did not riot, “he got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it”.
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