US President Donald Trump has said his administration is working on a trade deal with the UK that could be struck “very shortly”, as he met with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to discuss the future of Ukraine.
During a press conference in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said that the US vice-president JD Vance and US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent were among senior Republicans in the administration working on the potential deal.
“I think we’ll have the confines, I think we’ll have something — maybe even in terms of possibilities — agreed to very shortly,” Trump said.
“We’ll see if we can do something pretty quickly, but we’re going to make some great trade agreements with the UK,” he added.
Starmer confirmed that the UK and US on Thursday decided “to begin work on a new economic deal with advanced technology at its core”.
The remarks came at the end of a bilateral meeting in which Starmer urged Trump to provide US military cover to secure peace in Ukraine and to make clear to Russian President Vladimir Putin that any future aggression from Moscow would be repelled.
In return, he wants Trump to provide a US “backstop” to support a European stabilisation force in Ukraine, including air cover, heavy lift aircraft, aerial intelligence and missiles.
However, Trump declined to commit to providing any such military backstop, saying that the US would provide an effective deterrent for potential Russian aggression by having its workers in Ukraine under a proposed minerals deal with Kyiv.
