Breaking: New trade agreement with the U.K.

Let's hope Trump gives Starmer some flowers after this "deal" .

Contrary to popular belief we did have some form of tariffs already in place on the UK (who knew). Now apparently the baseline 10% tariffs will remain in place, much to the chagrin of certain economists. Honestly I don't believe that 10% tariffs are going to be noticed very much, especially when we obviously were not noticing the 3.4% tariffs we had. These tariffs have a tendency to be split three ways to some degree with the exporter, the importer, and ultimately the consumer splitting the cost, with generally the first two eating most of the cost.

I have been waiting for the first announcement for some time now. Getting a little worried in fact. Now that this has been completed, I would expect some announcements of agreements with other friendly nations (Japan and Israel come to mind) over the next couple of week. Rumor has it that the US and China are actually holding some meetings in a neutral location, but I wouldn't expect much to come from that until there are other deals in place. The more deals we can make with other countries, the more China becomes isolated and the more leverage we will eventually have.

At the end of the day, this is a better deal for the United States than it is for the U.K. I am actually quite surprised as I would have expected both countries lowering tariffs or removing them all together. Trump is certainly looking to really get good deals for us rather than "fair deals" for both. I suspect this will cool the wheels of those in Congress who wanted to present legislation that would undermine all of these negotiations by taking away the President's authority on tariffs. Whether it drives people away from the criticism is another question.