The UK and the US announced the first bilateral post-Reciprocal Tariffs deal on 8 May, named the 'U.S.-UK Economic Prosperity Deal' (henceforth the US-UK EPD). The document published yesterday draws out the contours of this EPD, alongside some concrete initial proposals for reciprocal preferential market access for selected goods. Notwithstanding the negotiations starting immediately, this arrangement can be called off at any time, simply by the two parties giving each other written notice. Besides its symbolic and diplomatic relevance, what is the value of this emerging deal for the UK? This is not a Free Trade Agreement. At first glance, it looks like a quid-pro-quo “mini-deal” of limited economic relevance that the US strong-armed the UK into accepting under the threat of tariffs. The UK is getting some respite from Trump’s tariffs in the (important) car and the (strategic) steel and aluminium sectors, in exchange for lowering tariffs on some agricultural products such as ethanol and beef, the latter on a reciprocal basis. But a closer reading of the ‘General Terms document’ suggests that it is more than this, and a lot worse. First, as stated on page 1 of the text, the arrangement that the US and the UK [...]