The US-UK trade agreement is a capitulation to Trump’s extortion

8 May 2025, 18:08

Keir Starmer has sold out the British public with this US-UK deal, agreed with no democratic scrutiny or accountability on its terms by the British parliament or civil society.

As I write, few details on the specifics of the agreement are available to the public, except for the titbits we have gleaned from Trump’s rambling press conference and Starmer’s evasive statements.

What is clear is that the UK remains in a worse position than we were in January, with 10% tariffs remaining on the car manufacturing sector, and huge swathes of the British economy seemingly on the table — from pharmaceuticals to agriculture – to be carved up for American markets.

While this thin deal does not yet contain the worst US demands such as chlorinated chicken, it paves the way for major increases in US beef exports that will concern British farmers, as well as “other agricultural products”. And it doesn’t protect us from further American protectionism.

Just this week, Trump made up a new category of tariffs on filmmaking – a 100% tariff that will devastate the UK filmmaking industry. Removing these tariffs is not included in today’s announcement.

These tariffs are nothing short of a bullying tool to force the UK to kowtow to Trump’s America First agenda – which Keir Starmer has done. Further, this one-sided agreement is just a precursor to a bigger, worse deal – it fires the starting gun on more rounds of negotiations.

Trump will come back for more, and expect Starmer to say “thank you”. All the while, our parliament has no say on the terms of these agreements, which are negotiated in secret. Starmer has no qualms about appeasing other authoritarian leaders like Narendra Modi – the UK-India trade deal, also just agreed without public scrutiny – introduces dangerous corporate courts that give corporations even more power to evade democratic scrutiny.

While the vast majority of the British public detests Trump, political leaders from Starmer to Badenoch and Farage are lining up to pay homage as vassals to the new Orange King.

This failure of the UK political elite to present a serious opposition to Trump’s authoritarian agenda is an indictment of a system characterised by state capture by corporate lobbies. It’s time for a people-powered movement to mobilise and build the resistance to Trumpism and the global far right, holding elected politicians to account and demanding change to our failed, undemocratic system.

The Stop Trump Coalition is here to build this space.

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Seema Syeda is a spokesperson for the Stop Trump Coalition.

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