The president of the USA Donald Trump and his prime minister UK Kir Starmer meets Monday (16.6.2025), as they work to finalize a commercial pact between their two nations, which will be the first such agreement since the White House announced a series of punitive tariffs against countries worldwide.
While the two leaders announced the framework of an agreement last month, the thinnest points were left for further negotiations and nothing has yet been implemented. According to these initial terms, the USA they agreed reduce duties in cars imported by the UK to 10% from 27.5% for the first 100,000 vehicles each yearand reduce duties in steel to 0 from 25%.
In return, UK pledged to increase tariff quotas for American beef and ethanol.
“We will talk about our trade agreement, because this is really important to the vital areas guaranteed under our agreement,” Starmer told reporters in Kananaskis, Canada, at the Summit of the Seven (C7) group today. “We are now in the final stages of the application and I expect that this will be completed very soon.”
Trump and Starmer will have a bilateral meeting later today, during which they will discuss trade, among other things.
For the starmancompleting an agreement that will protect basic industries from more aggressive tariffs before other countries would be a justification for his diplomatic approach that refuses to openly criticize Trump.
For the US presidentit will be a message that its tariff war is yielding fruit after winning the United Kingdom concessions in the field of agriculture.
While the document agreed in May said that US duties in the United Kingdom steel will be reduced to 0, it still remains unclear which duties will be implemented. The United Kingdom is currently the only country to avoid duty 50% on the steel announced by Trump last month, but the final terms could depend on the UK’s ability to soften US concerns about the Chinese ownership of the British Steel.