With all the other news that broke yesterday (i.e. the election of a new Pope), you may have missed the non-news “news” that came from the Oval Office earlier in the morning.
Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick gathered the White House Press corps to announce that the United States had just reached a trade agreement with the United Kingdom.
“The deal is the first made by the United States since President Donald Trump unveiled his so-called reciprocal tariffs on countries around the world last month,” CNBC reported.
“The United Kingdom’s position as one of a handful of countries where the U.S. boasts a trade surplus in goods — meaning the U.S. exports more to the U.K. than it imports — put the country at the front of the queue for officials to broker an agreement with the Trump administration.”
“However, even Britain, with its ‘special relationship’ with the U.S., didn’t manage to persuade Trump to drop all tariffs during trade talks.”
Additionally, the “deal” isn’t actually a deal. It’s a framework, which means the details haven’t been ironed out.
But to hear Lutnick tell it, the deal was emblematic of what a masterful negotiator the Orange Menace is.
“I want to make this clear: while JD Vance and others worked hard, this was the president’s deal,” Lutnick gushed. “And if people think, ‘Oh, that’s not the way it works’ — if you got to sit next to him, I have the best dealmaker to my left.”
“If you don’t think that we take advantage of him calling the prime minister and getting that deal done, you don’t understand who’s the president of the United States. He’s the closer. He gets deals done that we could never get done because he understands business. He understands deals. And that’s why we’re here today.”
Lutnick’s effusive praise and fawning didn’t go over well with many who witnessed it, and they let their disgust be known on social media.
