'Best Out Of A Bad Lot': Naga Munchetty Questions Labour's New Deal With The US

The BBC Breakfast’sNaga Munchetty suggested the government’s new trade deal with the US is “the best out of a bad lot” this morning.

No.10 announced its new agreement with Donald Trump on Thursday, promising that thousands of jobs will be saved under the deal.

It will see tariffs on British steel and aluminium exports to the US being cut from 25% to zero.

Tariffs on 100,000 British cars being sold to America will also be cut from 27.5%.

But, during an interview with chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones, Munchetty pointed out that the average British tariffs on US goods have fallen from 5.1% to 1.8% while US levies on UK imports have risen from 3.4% to 10%.

“So you’ve made a deal – as part of this special relationship – but we are paying more than they are,” the presenter noted.

He replied: “Would we rather be in a world where we were a year ago where there were less tariffs generally? Yes of course, we’ve been very clear that we don’t think tariffs are very good for global trade or economies.”

But he added: “The world has changed, we have to work within the world as we find it, not as we would like it to be. What this deal has done is get down some of these really punitive tariffs on key sectors in the economy where it was having a halting effect on production.”

Munchetty jumped in: “I’m hearing it’s the best of a bad deal, the best out of a bad lot.”

The minister insisted: “No it’s a good deal because we’re the first country to get these tariffs down on key sectors.”

She replied: “You’ve got them down a further amount, but you don’t know how much further you could have got them down if other countries made deals.”

“That’s quite a complex hypothetical, but the tariffs are down, that’s protected British jobs and business, that is a good deal,” he replied.

Jones added there are a “difficult” set of circumstances that the UK is currently in, and the government is still looking to go further.

“Would I rather the global economy were a much calmer place with free trade where we could get on and do deals in a calm way, yes of course I would, but there is a lot going on in the world,” he said.

Munchetty was not the only person expressing scepticism over the new deal this morning.

On Times Radio, presenter Calum MacDonald asked Jones: “That criticism, first of all, is from the Tories, that it’s a Diet Coke trade deal, that we’ve not got the full thing. That is true, isn’t it? We don’t know the full detail of this yet.”

The minister said the details are being published and will be presented to parliament in due course. 

He said: “But as the prime minister said, this is the beginning, not the end. It’s the kind of first phase in our trade negotiations with the United States. And we want to go further in a whole host of other areas and we’ll continue to negotiate on that basis.”