Rachel Reeves will visit Washington DC in the next few days. Formally, the chancellor is attending the International Monetary Fund’s spring meeting of finance ministers. Informally, she will also be meeting representatives of Donald Trump’s administration to discuss the US-UK trade deal that sometimes appears, like a mirage, in the near future.
Any negotiation with the Trump administration is a fraught affair, because however normal the discussions seem at the level of officials or ministers, they are liable to be upended by the whims of the president and vice-president. In the past few days alone Mr Trump and JD Vance have said contradictory things about how much the president loves the United Kingdom and is hopeful of a deal, while Mr Trump has suggested that the 10 per cent minimum tariff is permanent, and Mr Vance has signalled that any deal would depend on the UK lifting some largely imagined restrictions on free speech.
