PNN – CNN news network announced following the US-UK trade agreement unveiled on Thursday local time that the deal is a major diplomatic victory for the British government and appears to confirm the friendly and cautious relationship that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has developed with US President Donald Trump.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, CNN added: Starmer has refrained from criticizing the US president even when Trump has angered other British politicians, and the removal of tariffs was the reward Starmer sought most.
A broader trade pact with Washington, similar to the one signed earlier this week between the UK and India, has been pursued by successive governments since Britain left the European Union, or Brexit, but has so far been elusive.
Former US President Barack Obama’s 2016 remarks that London would be at the “back of the queue” for a deal if it voted to leave the EU alarmed British negotiators. A decade later, the UK appears to have struggled to get to the front of the line.
But there is still much to be done. Starmer has taken a balanced approach in his first year in office, seeking closer ties with the US, Europe and China. Any relationship would bode well for a country suffering from a decade of low growth.
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But managing cooperation with rival powers comes with risks for a prime minister entering the global arena.
Starmer’s next priority will be a deal with Brussels that eases some of the constraints of Brexit, and polls show that Britons prefer closer ties with Europe to the Trump administration.
US President Donald Trump announced the first trade deal of his second term with Britain on Thursday local time, marking a turning point in his tumultuous trade war.
The US President announced at a press conference from the White House on Thursday local time that under the agreement, Britain would process American goods through customs “more quickly,” but “some details still need to be finalized.”
The historic tariff hikes, which took effect for just a few hours, were delayed until July so the US government could negotiate trade deals with foreign countries. Trump said last week that trade deals with South Korea, India and Japan were also imminent.
Trump predicted that the United States would earn $6 billion from the 10 percent tariff that remains in place on goods imported from Britain, and that the agreement would create $5 billion in new export opportunities for American ranchers, farmers, and manufacturers.