Trump’s bespoke trade deal with UK sets little precedent for other nations

Trump agreed to a framework for a trade agreement with the U.K., giving his administration momentum as it faces pressure to notch scores more to avoid hurting American consumers. But the deal was limited in scope and included niche issues regarding the U.K., meaning it didn’t offer other nations a clear road map to follow, foreign officials said.

Many other deals weren’t seen as likely to come together so easily. The U.K. was low-hanging fruit, given the U.S. enjoys a goods trade surplus with the country, unlike with China, America’s third-largest trading partner for goods in 2024, according to the Census Bureau. Imports from China are currently subject to a whopping 145% levy.

In a sign of how eager Trump was for a win in the trade conflicts, he called U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer late Wednesday to finalize the details. Starmer was watching his favorite soccer team, Arsenal, play a crucial European game at the time, according to the prime minister, who said he hadn’t planned to announce a trade deal on Thursday.

“They are keen to show they are making progress," said Myron Brilliant, a senior counselor at DGA Group. “These are signals to the market. It’s better to have a step forward than a step back. But they are going to have to demonstrate these deals are going to end up with sustaining commitments on both sides."

While analysts questioned the significance of the deal, Trump, who has shown frustration with questions over his trade agenda and the global turbulence it has created, cast it as historic. His team said the deal would unlock billions for U.S. exporters. The Trump administration agreed to roll back tariffs imposed on British steel and automobiles in exchange for the U.K.’s purchasing Boeing jets and giving American farmers greater access to U.K. markets. The U.S. also agreed to allow Rolls-Royce jet engines and parts to be imported tariff-free.

Trump expressed confidence in reaching agreements with other countries, notably China. The president, though, showed no sign of backing entirely away from his tariff agenda as he seeks to rebalance global trade.

“One lesson from the U.S.-U.K. announcement is that all of America’s trading partners are likely to face at minimum a 10% tariff," said National Foreign Trade Council President Jake Colvin. “That alone would result in a permanent fourfold increase from the average U.S. tariff of 2.4% in 2024, which is a scenario that was nearly unthinkable just a year ago."

President Trump touted the trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. from the Oval Office on Thursday.

The nature of the U.K. agreement shows how Trump is willing to bypass traditional trade pacts that can take several years to hammer out. The move also highlighted the soft power of the U.K.; Trump is a keen Anglophile who has in the past said he thought a deal could be worked out.

Foreign partners generally viewed Thursday’s news as positive but didn’t see how its contours directly applied to their own talks, officials said.

Trump is dispatching Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Switzerland this weekend for high-stakes talks with officials from China. The two nations have effectively closed trading through massive retaliatory tariffs.

For Chinese officials, what’s notable in the limited deal Trump struck with the U.K. is that it doesn’t appear to have any details about the two countries aligning to isolate China—a stated goal by Trump advisers for the administration’s trade negotiations with various nations.

The lack of such details, at least for now, is likely to bolster China’s position as senior officials from both sides meet in Switzerland. Meanwhile, even though Trump told reporters Thursday that he expects the coming U.S.-China meeting to be “substantive," Beijing is treating it largely as an opportunity to present its position and gauge the administration’s intentions.

In particular, Chinese officials view it as a chance to figure out whether the Trump administration—and Trump himself—intend to pursue a deal that could help put the brakes on the current trend of decoupling between the U.S. and China. If those talks with China go well, Trump suggested the tariffs could come down. “We’re going to see. Right now you can’t get any higher. It’s at 145% so we know it’s coming down," he said.

A European Union diplomat said it could be helpful to get a sense from the U.K. of what worked in negotiating with the U.S. But the diplomat added the U.K. market is much smaller than the EU’s and is more unified compared with the bloc’s 27 member states.

A spokeswoman for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who visited with Trump this week, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the implications of the U.S.-U.K. framework. Bank of Nova Scotia economist Derek Holt said the U.S. runs a goods trade surplus with the U.K., and hence hasn’t found itself “in the same crosshairs of the Trump administration as other countries," such as Canada.

Mark Warner, a trade lawyer who practices in Toronto and the U.S., said Canada faces a tougher haul because of the range of issues outstanding, such as automobiles, dairy production, and Canada’s digital services tax. Plus, he said, Carney “has adopted a more contentious approach to trade negotiations with a lot of red lines and no evident openings for compromise in a minority Parliament." The U.S. is also engaged with a range of other nations, including India and Japan.

Juan Carlos Baker, who was Mexico’s deputy trade minister during the negotiations for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement signed in late 2018, said the deal with the U.K. is in no way comparable to the deeper trade relationship the U.S. has with Mexico.

Mexico shipped almost three million vehicles to the U.S. and supplied 40% of U.S. auto parts last year.

A coming review of the USMCA is more complex and negotiations can extend for years, Baker said. “Even with the best will, such an agreement doesn’t come out overnight in any way," said Baker, who participated in USMCA trade negotiations with the U.S. and Canada for about two years.

In the initial aftermath of the April 2 “Liberation Day" tariffs announcement and the subsequent 90-day pause, Trump and top administration officials predicted a wave of deals. Trump in recent days has expressed frustration with questions on when deals will land.

“Everyone says, ‘When, when, when are you going to sign deals?’" the president told reporters during his Tuesday meeting with Carney. “We don’t have to sign deals, they have to sign deals with us."

Write to Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com, Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com and Paul Vieira at Paul.Vieira@wsj.com