This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘The US-UK trade deal’
Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, May 9th. This is your FT News Briefing. The US and the UK have a trade deal, and the Bank of England cut interest rates again. Plus, we’ll hear from a US regulator who is fired.
Alvaro Bedoya
I personally wondered if some of the things and political donations that had been steered towards the president had somehow played a role in my firing.
Marc Filippino
I’m Marc Filippino and here’s the news you need to start your day.
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The US struck its first major trade deal since President Donald Trump announced global tariffs last month.
Donald Trump voice clip
You all set to go? This is …
Keir Starmer voice clip
Ready when you are.
Donald Trump voice clip
OK. (overlapping speech)
Marc Filippino
Trump held a press conference yesterday in the Oval Office to announce it, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on speakerphone.
Donald Trump voice clip
And your voice comes through beautifully, Keir. So I just want to . . .
Keir Starmer voice clip
Oh, that’s good.
Donald Trump voice clip
Yeah, it is. You sound great.
Marc Filippino
The Trump administration has been negotiating with the UK after the US slapped tariffs on British imports.
Donald Trump voice clip
With this deal, the UK joins the United States in affirming that reciprocity and fairness is an essential and vital principle of international trade.
Marc Filippino
Here to explain is the FT’s US trade and climate correspondent, Aime Williams. Hi, Aime.
Aime Williams
Hello.
Marc Filippino
All right, let’s break this deal down a little bit. What does each country get out of it?
Aime Williams
Well, the details are still actually emerging, but some of the top line things that we know. So the US had put tariffs of 25 per cent on car imports. In this deal, it offers the UK 100,000 cars that can come into the US at a lower tariff of 10 per cent. This is something that’s very important to the UK auto industry and covers the bulk of British exports to the US in that sector. Steel and aluminium is another big pain point here. Trump had put 25 per cent tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminium. The UK was very unhappy with this. We are still watching for the fine print on this one. What we solidly know is that the US has said it will negotiate a better deal with the UK on this.
Marc Filippino
All right, so that’s on the US side. What about the UK side?
Aime Williams
On the UK side, they have made some concessions to US farmers and ranchers, and there will be some improved market access for US beef and ethanol. The other thing to note is that the US was incredibly angry with the UK’s digital services tax, which is a tax the UK levies on tech companies. The US argues that this mainly affects US companies, and it wanted it wiped. It does not look that the UK has altered that.
Marc Filippino
That’s a pretty important sticking point. I guess, given that, how big of a deal is this agreement for both economies?
Aime Williams
I think it’s quite a big deal. I mean, the UK was really suffering with the auto tariffs. Cars are the biggest export from the UK to the US. So that is a real critical win for them. But clearly this is by no means a perfect deal as far as we can see so far. So talks I expect would continue, although Trump said yesterday morning that the deal was maxed out and very conclusive. So, we’ll see.
Marc Filippino
Still, even if there is more negotiation to come, trade deals usually take years to hammer out. What does it tell you about geopolitics right now that the two countries agreed to a deal so quickly?
Aime Williams
Definitely. I think we have to redefine what a trade deal is. So free trade agreements are comprehensive agreements recognised by the World Trade Organization.
Marc Filippino
USMCA.
Aime Williams
Exactly, USMCA. The US has a whole bunch of them right with South Korea and others. Those take years and also have to go through Congress, which can hold them up even more. Trump has taken to calling kind of limited agreements, trade deals. And it’s by necessity as well, right? He is negotiating currently, according to his Treasury secretary, with 17 countries. We’ve heard numbers as high as 90 countries want to do a deal with the US. I mean, he’s put tariffs of up to 50 per cent on some of the U S’s biggest trading partners. We have a 90-day suspension on those. So 90 days for the US to come to some deal with all of these different countries. I mean, this has to move quickly. And so I think they’re covering the basics and getting what they can.
Marc Filippino
I’m glad you brought up those other countries because, as you mentioned, there are several trade deals that the US says that they’ve been trying to negotiate. Obviously, this weekend is a big one for the US. They’re meeting in Switzerland with their Chinese counterparts. Does the deal that we’re talking about right now between the US and the UK build momentum towards these other deals?
Aime Williams
I think this deal definitely builds momentum towards other deals. It does show the Trump administration is serious about getting stuff done with other countries. I don’t know if a deal between the US and the UK necessarily builds momentum towards a deal with China because China is just in a league of its own, right? The trade tensions are so much bigger. There are so many more pain points, so many more disagreements. So this is obviously a positive step. US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and trade representative Jamieson Greer will meet their Chinese counterparts in Switzerland this weekend, but it’s likely to be the start of a very long road.
Marc Filippino
Amie Williams covers trade for the FT. Thanks, Amie.
Aime Williams
Thank you.
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Marc Filippino
The Bank of England lowered interest rates yesterday by a quarter point. Its base rate is now down to 4.25 per cent. But the committee was pretty divided over the move. Some wanted an even bigger cut. Others voted to keep things the same. The central bank has been juggling a bunch of things. First, the repercussions of chancellor Rachel Reeves’ tax hikes that she announced last October and the uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs. The decision to lower rates came just before the UK announced its new trade deal with the US. The BoE signalled that it was going to be pretty cautious about lowering rates in the future. Traders are now pricing in just two cuts for the rest of the year. Before the meeting, the odds were looking good for three.
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Alvaro Bedoya was serving as one of two Democratic members on the US Federal Trade Commission — that’s the agency that enforces antitrust and consumer protection laws. Then in March, he and his colleague Rebecca Kelly Slaughter received emails from the White House saying they were being fired from their roles as commissioners. Bedoya and Slaughter have since filed a lawsuit against Trump and other members of the FTC challenging their dismissal. They cite a Supreme Court case saying the president doesn’t actually have the authority to just fire someone without proof of poor behaviour. My colleague Michela Tindera recently spoke with Bedoya for the FT’s Behind the Money podcast. She talked with him about why he’s fighting to get his job back and what this could mean for businesses and markets. Here’s a snippet of that conversation.
Michela Tindera
Why do you think you were fired?
Alvaro Bedoya
I do not know (laughter) why I was fired. Look, I mean, what I can say is both commissioner Slaughter and I tried to do our jobs without fear or favour and have been very concerned about conduct by a lot of the most powerful market actors. And these include companies and CEOs of these companies that have spent a lot money, either at the inauguration or in political donations or other flows of money into the president. And so I had been very critical recently of working conditions on Amazon warehouse floors. And so one of the last things I did was call attention to this very publicly. And so, I personally wondered if some of the things and political donations that had been steered towards the president had somehow played a role in my firing, but obviously there’s no way for me to figure that out at any point soon.
Michela Tindera
OK, sure. So I’m curious then what your thoughts are on just why maybe Wall Street and people that are invested in the stock market should care about all this.
Alvaro Bedoya
So Humphrey’s Executor, the precedent, this 90-year-old Supreme Court case that is a bedrock of American jurisprudence, protects not just me, Alvaro Bedoya, not just commissioner Slaughter, but also the Fed chair Jerome Powell. And so this isn’t just about FTC doing its job. It’s also about your 401k. It’s about your checking and savings account and the stability that stable leadership provides within those institutions. So that’s something that’s really important about our independence vis-à-vis the rest of the market.
And so a world where there is a facial challenge to the statute that Humphrey’s Executor upheld, and if that bedrock principle of American law is turned on its head, that means that Fed chair Jerome Powell can be fired for no reason at any time. That’s in all likelihood what that means. And so, a world where the lawsuit that commissioner Slaughter and I have filed to make clear that we remain commissioners, a world where we lose is a world where the president can say anything to anyone about how long he wants to keep Mr Powell in office but can wake up tomorrow morning with a twinkle in his eye and make all of that go away.
Michela Tindera
As a Democrat working in the FTC, you were supporting former chair Lina Khan’s agenda. Do you see that agenda being carried forward into the coming months and years if you’re not on the commission?
Alvaro Bedoya
Look, before my firing, I would say absolutely yes, and there’s been a couple of strands to this. So one obviously is Big Tech. Chairman Ferguson, for example, has to his credit, said he wants to continue to conduct vigorous law enforcement against Big Tech. And the other tranche of bipartisan agreement is around labour. You know, assistant attorney-general Gail Slater, who I happen to have a very high opinion of, one of the very first public meetings she had was with organised labour, and I think she just recently gave a speech about her desire to protect not just product markets, but consumer markets. And so I think the individual law enforcers that we have in the AAG slot and in the slot of chairman of the FTC will continue aspects of what Chair Khan and commissioner Slaughter and I, the work we did. But of course, this decision to try to remove us for no reason casts a pall on that.
Marc Filippino
After Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter were fired back in March, FTC chair Andrew Ferguson put out a statement. In it, Ferguson said that he had, quote, no doubts about Trump’s, quote, constitutional authority to remove commissioners, which is necessary to ensure democratic accountability for our government, end quote.
You can hear the whole conversation on the Behind the Money podcast. We have a link to that in the show notes.
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Before we go, the Catholic church elected its first-ever American pope yesterday. Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost will now be known as Pope Leo XIV.
Pope Leo XIV voice clip
La pace sia con tutti voi. (Crowd cheering)
Marc Filippino
He spoke to a massive crowd outside the Vatican saying, “May peace be with you all”. Pope Leo is seen as sharing many of the late Pope Francis’ ideas about the environment and immigration.
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You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back next week for the latest business news.
The FT News Briefing was produced this week by Sonja Hutson, Lulu Smyth, Ethan Plotkin, Kasia Broussalian and me, Marc Filippino. Our show is mixed by Katie McMurran. We had help this week from Michela Tindera, Katya Kumkova, Michael Lello, Peter Barber, and Gavin Kallmann. Our acting co-head of audio is Topher Forhecz, and our theme song is by Metaphor Music.
