No. of Recommendations: 12
You just said they’d been working on this for years. Doesn’t sound like something they’re rushing through.
Rushed a bit to the point where an announcement can be made - not rushed over all. Again, this is a trade deal that was already in the works for years, not something that was prompted by the 'reciprocal' tariffs. So if it was 95% done (or whatever), you can get through that last 5% if you're sufficiently motivated. And taking a bit hit in the polls because of fears about your tariff strategy is a pretty good motivator.
Another poster made that very claim last night. The words were along the lines of “the US economy is on the brink of collapse and everyone knows it”. Kier Starmer, being a total conservative wouldn’t want to take advantage of that /s.
No one's seriously advocating that the U.S. economy is on the brink of "collapse" - though we do face a serious likelihood of recession. Don't confuse message-board hyperbole for the actual positions that people take.
As for Starmer, I would hardly be surprised if he did take advantage a bit of the sticky situation the Administration put themselves in. The Administration needed a deal to announce. The UK is one of the few countries that had already been in serious process of negotiating a deal even before the whole tariff scheme. That gave Starmer a lot of cards to play - he could help Trump with a political problem (of Trump's own creation), and thus get some concessions from the U.S. on this trade deal that he might not otherwise have been able to get.
The problem, again, with imposing these tariffs on everyone in a stupid way is not that they will prevent us from getting deals altogether. It's that we're negotiating those deals from a position of weakness, because the strategy is so daft. You can always still reach a deal from a position of weakness, but it won't necessarily be a very good one.
