Trump tariffs on UK goods unjustified - here's why

As Chancellor Rachel Reeves meets her counterpart, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent to discuss an "economic agreement" between the two countries, the latest trade figures confirm three realities that ought to shape negotiations.

The first is that the US remains a vital customer for UK businesses, the largest single-nation export market for British goods and the third-largest import partner, critical to the UK automotive industry, already landed with a 25% tariff, and pharmaceuticals, which might yet be. In 2024, the US was the UK's largest export market for cars, worth £9bn to companies including Jaguar Land Rover, Bentley and Aston Martin, and accounting for more than 27% of UK automotive exports.

Little wonder the domestic industry fears a heavy and immediate impact on sales and jobs should tariffs remain. Money latest: '14 million Britons on course for parking fine this year' American car exports to the UK by contrast are worth just £1bn, which may explain why the chancellor may be willing to lower the current tariff of 10% to 2.5%.

For UK medicines and pharmaceutical producers meanwhile, the US was a more than £6bn market in 2024. Currently exempt from tariffs, while Mr Trump and his advisers think about how to treat an industry he has long-criticised for high prices, it remains vulnerable.

The second point is that the US is even more important for the services industry. British exports of consultancy, PR, financial and other professional services to America were worth £131bn last year.

That's more than double the total value of the goods traded in the same direction, but mercifully services are much harder to hammer with the blunt tool of tariffs, though not immune from regulation and other "non-tariff barriers". The third point is that, had Donald Trump stuck to his initial rationale for tariffs, UK exporters should not be facing a penny of extra cost for doing business with the US.

The president says he slapped blanket tariffs on every nation bar Russia to "rebalance" the US economy and reverse goods trade 'deficits' - in which the US imports more than it exports to a given country. That heavily contested argument might apply to Mexico, Canada, China and many other manufacturing nations, but it does not meaningfully apply to Britain.

Read more: Could Trump tariffs tip the world into recession? Figures from the Office for National Statistics show the US ran a small goods trade deficit with the UK in 2024 of £2.2bn, importing £59.3bn of goods against exports of £57.1bn. Add in services trade, in which the UK exports more than double what it imports from the US, and the UK's surplus - and thus the US 'deficit' - swells to nearly £78bn.

That might be a problem were it not for the US' own accounts of the goods and services trade with Britain, which it says actually show a $15bn (£11.8bn) surplus with the UK. You might think that they cannot both be right, but the ONS disagrees.

The disparity is caused by the way the US Bureau of Economic Analysis accounts for services, as well as a range of statistical assumptions. Read more from Sky News:Water regulation slammed by spending watchdogRate cut speculation lights up as economic outlook darkens "The presence of trade asymmetries does not indicate that either country is inaccurate in their estimation," the ONS said.

That might be encouraging had Mr Trump not ignored his own arguments and landed the UK, like everyone else in the world, with a blanket 10% tariff on all goods. Trade agreements are notoriously complex, protracted affairs, which helps explain why after nine years of trying, the UK still has not got one with the US, and the Brexit deal it did with the EU against a self-imposed deadline has been proved highly disadvantageous..