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Topics: Donald Trump, UK News, US News, Politics
Anish Vij
Topics: Donald Trump, UK News, US News, Politics
Donald Trump has announced that America has reached a trade agreement with the UK.
The US president made the 'historic' announcement in the Oval Office while on a video call with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday (8 May).
The 78-year-old remained cautiously optimistic as 'final details are being written up', but also noted that 'just about everything has been approved'.
Trump explained that US chemical and industrial companies will now be getting improved access to UK markets.
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He said: "The deal includes billions of dollars of increased market access for American exports, especially in agriculture, dramatically increasing access for American beef, ethanol, and virtually all the products produced by our great farmers."
"Today's agreement with the UK is the first in a series of agreements on trade that my administration has been negotiating over the past four weeks," Trump added.
"With this deal, the UK joins the United States in affirming that reciprocity and fairness is an essential and vital principle of international trade."
Starmer called it 'a really fantastic, historic day' and thanked Trump's team of negotiators for coming up with a fair deal.
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They did 'an incredible job, a very professional job,' he said.
"This is going to boost trade, between, and across our countries," the Prime Minister believes. "It's going to not only protect jobs, but create jobs, opening market access."
The 62-year-old said 'the timing couldn’t be more apt' because it was '80 years ago today that victory came for Europe after and at the end of the Second World War'.
He pointed out that, at the time, 'the UK and the US stood together as the closest of allies'.
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"To be able to announce this great deal on the same day, 80 years forward, almost at the same hour - and as we were 80 years ago with the UK, the US standing side by side - I think is incredibly important and makes this truly historic," he added.
Explaining how both counties were able to come up with a deal, US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said: “They’ve agreed to open their markets, and that will add five billion US dollars of opportunity to American exporters.
“So the question is, why would they do that now, because they’ve never done it before? And we still have a 10 percent tariff on which will produce six billion US dollars of revenue for the United States.
“So the idea was, how did they keep their jobs, protect their economy and do the best for their people, while opening the market for us?”
He said the UK has 'found the ways to do that so that we have new access, but the UK workers are protected, and that was the balance'.