Downing Street officials argue the 10 percent tariff on U.K. exports \u2014 the joint-lowest Trump applied to any country \u2014 \u201cvindicates\u201d Britain\u2019s approach, and many feared worse, given the U.K.\u2019s Value Added Tax on most sales is 20 percent. The EU, which Britain only left five years ago, was charged 20 percent.<\/p>\n
There is a less inspiring reason to continue the charm offensive, though. \u201cThey haven\u2019t got any choice,\u201d said Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. \u201cIt\u2019s not in the [U.K.’s] interests to have a trade war.\u201d<\/p>\n
POLITICO spoke to more than a dozen U.K. officials, ministers and industry figures, all granted anonymity to speak frankly, to build a picture of Britain\u2019s so far disappointing search for a tariffs carve-out \u2014 and ask whether it could yet pay off.<\/p>\n
The special relationship<\/strong><\/p>\n Downing Street used Starmer\u2019s Feb. 27 White House visit to publicize its push for an economic deal. But the groundwork was laid before that; Reynolds raised the idea with Lutnick around a week earlier, in their first phone call after Lutnick was confirmed by the Senate, to ensure it would not be dead on arrival, one person familiar with the negotiations said.<\/p>\n After Starmer flew home to the U.K., talks began in earnest \u2014 generally limited to a circle of fewer than a dozen people.<\/p>\n The talks were formally led by Reynolds but aided heavily by Mandelson and Chandra \u2014 both arch-networkers who have navigated the worlds of geopolitical influence and City finance respectively. Chandra joined Reynolds on a March 19 delegation to meet Lutnick and Greer in Washington. Starmer intervened at key moments, though Downing Street has declined to say whether the PM exchanges text messages with Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Downing Street officials argue the 10 percent tariff on U.K. exports \u2014 the joint-lowest Trump applied to any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[1442,32,1214,806,1443,807,12,619,479,1200,1201,1219,16,15,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-2277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-competition","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-exports","12":"tag-industry","13":"tag-jonathan-reynolds","14":"tag-keir-starmer","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-rachel-reeves","17":"tag-tariffs","18":"tag-tax","19":"tag-trade","20":"tag-trade-war","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom","23":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114277609886188822","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}