Trump says deal ‘maxed out’ as UK ambassador calls it ‘starting point’
Donald Trump has called the deal between the UK and the US a “maxed-out deal.”
In response to the press question: “You said this was a comprehensive deal but [British ambassador] Peter Mandelson has said this is only a starting point” and whether he is overstating the reach and significance of the deal, Trump said:
“This is a maxed-out deal that we’re going to make bigger and we make it bigger through growth, but we have tremendous assets involved.”
He went on to add:
“There’ll be changes made, there’ll be adjustments made because we’re flexible, we’ll see things that we can do even better. But it’s very conclusive, and we, we think everyone’s going to be happy.”
Addressing reporters earlier, Mandelson said the deal “provides us with the platform, the springboard to what I think will be even more valuable for both our countries in the future.”
Mandelson also said this deal is “not the end” and is instead “just the beginning,” adding:
“There is more we can do in reducing tariffs and trade barriers so as to open up our markets to each other even more than we’re agreeing today.”
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Updated at 11.28 EDT
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In terms of how the two nations are framing the outlines of the deal so far, there seem to be some key differences, for instance with regard to agriculture.
The White House fact sheet and Trump makes much of the access to be gained by the US agricultural sector to the UK market as part of the agreement. According to the fact sheet, the deal includes access for “American beef, ethanol, and virtually all of the products produced by our great farmers”.
Again suggesting that an agreement would include beef among other things, it goes on:
This trade deal will significantly expand US market access in the UK, creating a $5 billion opportunity for new exports for US farmers, ranchers, and producers.
This includes more than $700 million in ethanol exports and $250 million in other agricultural products, like beef.
By contrast, however, the UK Department for Business news release seems quite specific that, other than ethanol, beef is the only agricultural product included and that the arrangement would be “reciprocal” (the White House details only American access to the UK market and doesn’t mention that it will work both ways).
The British department’s release reads:
In a win for both nations, we have agreed new reciprocal market access on beef – with UK farmers now benefiting from a quota for 13,000 metric tonnes. There will be no weakening of UK food standards on imports.
The US has long sought greater access to the British agricultural market, but hasn’t secured it amid concerns that US food products are produced to lower environmental and animal welfare standards than in the UK. You can read more about those concerns here.
Indeed when he spoke earlier to reporters, British PM Keir Starmer said with regard to agriculture:
We said we had red lines on standards, particularly in agriculture. We’ve kept to those standards.
He also said the deal would “grant unprecedented market access for British farmers without compromising our high standards”.
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Updated at 12.44 EDT
Here’s the White House’s fact sheet about the US-UK trade deal.
And here’s the UK Department for Business’s news release about it.
ShareAndrew Sparrow
Starmer says he trusts Trump to stick to deal he has agreed
Q: How do you know President Trump won’t just post something on Truth Social ripping this all up?
Starmer says there is a written text. He says he and Trump trust each other.
We respect each other, the president and I, and we trust each other, and have trusted each other through this process, each of us mandating our negotiating teams to get the best deal for our respective countries.
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Updated at 12.11 EDT
Andrew Sparrow
Starmer ducks question about whether, despite deal, UK still worse off due to Trump’s tariffs
Q: [From the BBC] Is the UK better off under this deal than it was six months ago, before President Trump introduced his tariffs?
Starmer rejects the premise of the question.
The question you should be asking is, is it better than where we were yesterday?
And I think if you should come out when you finished asking me questions and talk to the workforce here, because what this does is to reduce to zero the tariffs on steel and aluminium. Look how important that is.
Reduces massively from 27.5% to 10% of tariffs on the cars that we export – so important to JLR, actually to the sector generally. But JLR in particular, who sell so many cars into the American market.
And of course, it also includes pharmaceuticals, some really important measures. Obviously, we don’t have tariffs yet [in pharmaceuticals], but we’ve got within the deal significantly preferential treatment whatever happens in the future. So this is hugely important for our pharmaceutical sector as well.
In addition to that, we said we had red lines on standards, particularly in agriculture. We’ve kept to those standards.
ShareAndrew Sparrow
Starmer says deal means tariffs will be cut from 27.5% to 10% on 100,000 car exports to US every year
Following Trump’s press conference, British PM Keir Starmer also spoke about the deal and took questions from reporters. I’ll now post some of the key lines from that from my colleague Andrew Sparrow.
Starmer said:
This is a deal that will protect British businesses and save thousands of jobs In Britain, really important, skilled, well paid jobs. It will remove tariffs on British steel and aluminium, reducing them to zero. It will provide vital assurances for our life sciences sector, so important to our economy, and grant unprecedented market access for British farmers without compromising our high standards.
And he says the deal means US tariffs on cars from the UK will be cut from 27.5% to 10% for 100,000 vehicles every year.
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Updated at 12.28 EDT
Donald Trump has once again criticized Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, for not lowering interest rates.
Speaking to reporters, he said:
“If he would lower interest rates like China did, like I think UK did, like numerous other countries have done, it’s like jet fuel. It would be great, but he doesn’t want to do it. I think he doesn’t want to do it. Probably he’s not, he’s not in love with me. I think that’s right. It’s sort of a crazy reason, but that’s the way life is. Anybody in his position would be learned. It would be like jet fuel.”
Trump went on to claim that grocery and oil prices are down, saying that even without lowered interest rates, “We’re doing well.” He also claimed that “Eggs are down.”
Yet according to federal government data, since Trump’s inauguration, price hikes for food have increased and gas prices have largely stayed the same. Moreover, egg prices have increased, rising by almost 6% in March despite inflation dropping from 2.8% to 2.4% from February.
ShareCallum Jones
In a sign of how quickly UK and US officials raced to announce an agreement, Donald Trump said on Thursday “final details” were still being written up.
For months, as economists warned his controversial trade strategy risked triggering a recession, Trump and his closest officials insisted it would set the stage for the White House to hammer out dozens of trade deals.
But earlier this week, the US president pushed back against “everyone” asking when such agreements would be struck. “We don’t have to sign deals,” he said in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “They have to sign deals with us. They want our market. We don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market.”
US deals with other leading economies including India and Japan, while repeatedly mooted by administration officials, have yet to come to fruition. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, claimed this week that talks were under way with 17 trading partners.
By Thursday morning in the Oval Office, Trump took a different tack. US officials had “many meetings planned”, the president said, noting that Bessent would be meeting Chinese counterparts in Switzerland on Saturday. “Every country wants to be making deals.”
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Trump says deal ‘maxed out’ as UK ambassador calls it ‘starting point’
Donald Trump has called the deal between the UK and the US a “maxed-out deal.”
In response to the press question: “You said this was a comprehensive deal but [British ambassador] Peter Mandelson has said this is only a starting point” and whether he is overstating the reach and significance of the deal, Trump said:
“This is a maxed-out deal that we’re going to make bigger and we make it bigger through growth, but we have tremendous assets involved.”
He went on to add:
“There’ll be changes made, there’ll be adjustments made because we’re flexible, we’ll see things that we can do even better. But it’s very conclusive, and we, we think everyone’s going to be happy.”
Addressing reporters earlier, Mandelson said the deal “provides us with the platform, the springboard to what I think will be even more valuable for both our countries in the future.”
Mandelson also said this deal is “not the end” and is instead “just the beginning,” adding:
“There is more we can do in reducing tariffs and trade barriers so as to open up our markets to each other even more than we’re agreeing today.”
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Updated at 11.28 EDT
UK prime minister Keir Starmer is now addressing the White House over the phone, saying:
“[This is a] really important deal. This is going to boost trade between and across our countries. It’s going to not only protect jobs, but create jobs, opening market access, and as you say, Donald, the timing couldn’t be more apt, because not only was it 80 years ago today, victory came for Europe after and at the end of the Second World War but of course, on that day, the UK and the US stood together as the closest of allies.”
Starmer went on to emphasize the relationship between the US and the UK, saying it is built on “notions of fairness and reciprocal arrangements.”
He went on to add:
“With this president, with this prime minister, we’ve managed to achieve what many people tried to achieve for many years. And I’m really pleased.”
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Donald Trump is now speaking at the White House about a new trade deal between the US and the UK.
As part of the deal, there are plans that will bring the UK into the economic security alignment with the US.
“That’s the first of its kind. So we have a big economic security blanket and that’s very important and we feel very, very comfortable with that, because it’s been a great ally,” Trump said.
He went on to add:
“Both countries have agreed that the economic security is national security, and we’ll be working together as allies to ensure that we have a strong industrial base, appropriate export controls and protections for key technologies and industries like steel.”
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Bill Gates announces end of Gates Foundation and decries Elon Musk for Doge cuts
Bill Gates announced plans on Thursday to shutter the Gates Foundation in 2045 and also strongly criticized Elon Musk for slashing funding to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing the Tesla CEO of “killing the world’s poorest children” in new interviews.
Bill Gates speaks in New York last year. Photograph: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Netflix
In an interview with the Financial Times published on Thursday, Gates condemned the sudden funding cuts to USAID by Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), saying the cuts have led to life-saving food and medicines expiring in warehouses, and could result in the resurgence of diseases such as measles, HIV and polio. Gates said:
The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.
Since Donald Trump took office in January, he and Musk began cutting funding and scaling back operations at USAID, the US government’s foremost international aid agency, once the world’s largest single provider of humanitarian aid. Doge staffers have worked to hollow out and dismantle the agency and have terminated more than 5,600 USAID workers.
Gates, 69, told the FT that Musk had cancelled grants to a hospital in Gaza province, Mozambique, which he said was working to prevent the transmission of HIV from mothers to babies, based on the mistaken belief that the US was supplying condoms to Hamas in Gaza in the Middle East. He said:
I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money.
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The United States is leading global efforts to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan, Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif has told Reuters.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio has called Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and stressed on the need for the two countries to work closely to de-escalate their conflict, Sharif’s office said in a statement today.
You can follow our live coverage of the Kashmir crisis here:
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Updated at 10.42 EDT
Trump to announce more details on US-UK trade deal framework
Donald Trump will outline details of the new US-UK trade agreement alongside UK officials at 10am ET from the Oval Office, following a rollercoaster few weeks of trade uncertainty after his administration increased tariffs on several trading partners. I’ll bring you all the key lines from that.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer will also give an update later today, my colleague Andrew Sparrow will cover that over on UK politics live.
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Updated at 10.04 EDT
From Trump whisperer to West Wing pariah: What went wrong for lobbyist Brian Ballard – Politico
In this morning’s Playbook, Politico has the story of how, after a March incident at Mar-A-Lago involving cryptocurrency and a Truth Social post, the White House turned on well-known political fixer Brian Ballard.
Ever since Trump’s election, Florida operative Ballard has enjoyed a golden aura as the go-to lobbyist for those seeking to influence Trump world. His firm has added 130 new clients since November (including Chevron, JPMorgan, Palantir, Netflix and Axel Springer, Politico’s owner and parent company), and pulled in $14m in Q1 of 2025 alone.
But there is a chasm between Ballard’s reputation and how he’s currently perceived in the West Wing.
In early March, after Trump greenlit a Truth Social post promoting a “Crypto Strategic Reserve,” the president came away furious and felt like he’d been used. The whole thing happened at the urging of a Ballard employee, and Trump hadn’t realized that Ripple Labs, a company behind one of the crypto tokens, was a Ballard client. Ballard has been persona non grata in the West Wing ever since.
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Donald Trump blames air traffic control problems impacting US airports on former transport secretary Pete Buttigieg
“Air Traffic problems caused by the incompetent Biden Administration, as headed by, in this case, a total novice and political hack, Pete B. I WILL FIX IT!!!” Trump said in a Truth Social post this morning, referring to Buttigieg.
Later today his transportation secretary Sean Duffy is set to unveil a multi-billion dollar plan to overhaul the system.
“We are on it. We are going to fix it. We are going to build a brand new system for all of you and your families and the American people,” Duffy said.
It comes after hundreds of flights at Newark Liberty international airport, one of the US’s busiest hubs, were cancelled and delayed, partly due to air traffic control staffing issues.
Last week a tower communications outage left air traffic controllers unable to communicate with or see incoming planes bound for Newark for about 90 seconds.
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Ukraine ratifies strategic minerals deal with US
The Ukrainian parliament ratified a milestone minerals deal with the United States on Thursday, Reuters reports.
A total of 338 parliamentarians voted in favor of ratification, and no one voted against, said Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
The agreement grants the US preferential access to Ukrainian mineral resources and paves a path for possible new military aid for Kyiv, although it lacks clear security guarantees.
Here’s some background about the deal that Ukraine and the US signed last week from my colleague Andrew Roth.
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Updated at 08.44 EDT
Lauren Aratani
New York watchdog warns Trump cuts will usher in ‘open season’ for scammers
New York City’s financial watchdog is raising the alarm about the Trump administration’s cull of a key federal agency that oversees consumer financial protection laws, warning it will usher in an “open season” for fraudsters.
Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and a candidate for the city’s mayoral race, said the uprooting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will leave many Americans vulnerable to scams and predatory lending as the federal agency’s oversight and regulatory powers have been significantly diminished. Lander is calling on state and local governments to make up for the gap in oversight.
“Without the outreach and investigations, casemaking and prosecutions, I fear it will be open season, and these bad actors will just ramp things up again, knowing they’re not likely to get caught,” Lander said in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.
Created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB has recovered more than $17.5bn for consumers in compensation, debt cancellation and other relief measures, along with collecting $4bn in penalties through its enforcement of consumer protection laws.
Republicans have long been critical of the agency, accusing it of regulatory overreach. CFPB is now in the crosshairs of the so-called “department of government efficency” (Doge), which was until recently led by Elon Musk.
The White House has targeted the CFPB for severe cuts, putting nearly 1,500 of the agency’s 1,700 employees on notice for layoffs, which would amount to a 90% reduction of staff. Employees were reportedly told that CFPB would exist “in name only”.
Though the CFPB layoffs have been tied up in court – a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the firings and scheduled a hearing for mid-May – Lander said the agency had already been substantially weakened since Trump took office.
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Irish woman detained by US immigration released after 17 days in custody
Rory Carroll
An Irish woman who was detained by US immigration authorities because of a criminal record dating back almost 20 years has been released after 17 days in custody.
Cliona Ward, 54, who has lived legally in the US for decades, emerged on Wednesday from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Tacoma, Washington state.
After visiting her sick father in Ireland she had been detained at San Francisco airport on 21 April, causing an outcry in Ireland and the US and a campaign for her release.
Last week a California judge agreed to an application for the original convictions to be formally overturned in a manner that would be recognised at a federal level, paving the way for her release, according to Ward’s lawyers.
The incarceration left Ward traumatised but she was thankful for the support and she is now recuperating, her sister, Orla Holladay, wrote on a gofundme.com page. “Cliona is finally in her own bed and we are all ready for some quiet and reflection.”
Ward had requested food before returning home, Holladay wrote. “The first thing she did was jump on the bed and hug the pillows. She is in shock; filled with emotions, traumatized, full of gratitude, fear for the women she left behind.”
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Updated at 08.13 EDT
