Thursday briefing: Rachel Reeves heads to Washington in pursuit of a trade deal – will she get one?

Rachel Reeves​ has a plan to ensure any trade deal with the US ​h​as the UK​’s interests ‘front and centre’. Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA

Good morning. I’m Annie Kelly, I’ll be bringing you First Edition alongside Archie for the next few weeks.

It’s probably fair to say the annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has not traditionally been an event high on drama. Not so this year, as Rachel Reeves and her fellow finance ministers from around the globe have been blown into Washington DC on the chilly winds of global economic chaos caused by Donald Trump’s “America First” economic policies, pithily described in a recent Guardian leader as “part oligarchic enrichment scheme, part mobster shakedown”.