Britain hasn't agreed a trade deal with the US - it's ended a hostage negotiation | Gaby Hinsliff

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : Pay Trump what he feels he's due, and you get your economy back in roughly the state it was before, though missing a few fingers and probably traumatised.
51% : The 10% tariff on all British exports to the US, affecting everything from whisky to salmon as well as cars, stays with no word of when it might get lifted: that was "pretty well set", Trump said, indicating that for him that particular conversation is done.
48% : It will take time to unravel what this deal means for the May summit at which Britain is aiming for a bigger and more mutually beneficial "reset" deal with the EU, but getting something across the line now does at least mean the government doesn't have both US and European plates spinning madly at once.
42% : No wonder Keir Starmer laid on the Churchill comparisons with a generous trowel, pointing out the deal was being unveiled on the same day at almost the same hour as Victory in Europe - or just Victory, as Trump calls it, as if the Europe bit was irrelevant - was declared 80 years ago.
37% : After all, as far as he's concerned it works brilliantly. "We blew up the whole system," Trump crowed, at one point.
37% : If he finds the results of this first round of tariffs gratifying, then nothing about Trump suggests a man who knows when to stop.
35% : But why wouldn't Trump keep tariffing things?
35% : With Trump, that rule will be broken because it will have to be; democratic governments around the world, especially those besieged by populist parties, fear they won't survive the consequences of telling an angry public that they'll just have to learn to live with tariff-induced economic hardship following hot on the heels of crippling post-pandemic inflation.
34% : A VE Day trade deal with Donald Trump is done, and in the car plants of the West Midlands as much as in the backrooms of No 10, there will be understandable relief that, for now at least, America's phoney war on them is over.
30% : Trump volunteered in return that previous governments had long coveted a deal and "it never quite got there.
29% : But the terms agreed between London and Washington could save thousands of jobs, which isn't to be sniffed at, even if they're jobs that need never have been at risk in the first place had Trump not suddenly chosen to threaten them.
20% : The financial markets should rally, because Trump doing deals is at least better than Trump doling out arbitrary economic punishment: some will want to see in it a return to normal, after a burst of almost strategic craziness.

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