Inside No 10 scramble to avoid trade war chaos with deals across US states

The UK is considering new trade deals with individual US states, as it scrambles to restore trade relationships with American partners.

America is Britain’s single largest trading partner, representing nearly a fifth of total British trade – worth around £315bn.

But the relationship is in turmoil as Donald Trump ramps up his trade war, hitting the UK with 10 per cent tariffs and even higher levies on its all-important car industry.

Over the past three years, Britain has been quietly developing trade relationships with individual US states to pave the way for a possible formal trade agreement with the White House.

As Trump rips up the rulebook on international trade, setting back hopes of a nation-to-nation trade deal, could these state-level links save the special relationship?

Deals from east coast to west coast

The UK has signed nine agreements with US states since 2022, introducing memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, Washington, Florida, Texas and Colorado.

The agreements are designed to open up new markets for UK firms and identify areas of economic collaboration. A government trade insider said these states had already become “significant trading partners” and offer “substantial commercial opportunities for UK firms.”

The MoUs do not have any legal commitments – and cannot help the UK avoid tariffs – as state governments do not control US trade policy. That is done at a federal level.

However, they can help to co-ordinate policy and promote trade and investment in mutually agreeable sectors.

Michael Plouffe, associate professor of international political economy at University College London, said that such deals were “particularly interesting” as state governments “can provide incentives for trade and investment through other means, in addition to forming a potential pressure base in any formal trade-agreement negotiation.

“The most significant short-term benefits will be to reassure private-sector stakeholders in the US of the UK’s commitment to open trade and investment.

“Maintaining lines of communication can provide clarification of any changes to UK trade policy going forward, as well as co-ordination of efforts to avoid US tariffs through alternative forms of market access to goods trade.”

Dodging the rage of Trump trade war

As relations with the White House become strained, a spokesperson for Britain’s Department for Business and Trade hinted that further deals could be signed, saying it was “exploring various avenues to strengthen UK-US trade ties”.

In the meantime, it said it “would continue to deliver on commitments in our signed MoUs to help UK businesses deepen their commercial links and facilitate growth.”

Plouffe said the UK might seek further deals, but expected that this would go “hand in hand with similar outreach efforts to other national governments.”

He added: “Promoting and simplifying trade with non-US trading partners should reduce the impact of US tariffs on the UK economy, especially if meaningful steps are taken to remove post-Brexit red tape on UK-EU trade flows.”

William Bain, head of trade at the British Chambers of Commerce, said that pursuing further state deals “certainly bears some thought. The obvious states one might look to next would be California. But much depends on the priority of UK trade policy. There’s a huge amount of other activity, like the India trade deal, that the DBT has going on.”

Nuclear, medicine and tech: What the state deals involve

In January, Colorado signed an MOU with the UK, which is its largest source of foreign investment.

Last year, Colorado exported $230m in goods to the UK and imported $256m. The trade was mostly in nuclear reactors, medical technology and electronic machinery, as well as aircraft and organic chemicals.

Over the last five years, the state said Colorado companies invested an estimated $1.3bn in capital expenditure and created an estimated 3,765 jobs in the UK.

The new MoU focuses on boosting collaboration in clean energy, “climate-smart” agriculture, quantum technologies, space technology, tourism and artificial intelligence – “all important economic drivers for both economies”, Colorado’s Office of Economic Development said.

It added that the deal helped with “fostering pathways for investments into Colorado and UK businesses, stimulating economic growth in both our regions and creating good-paying jobs.”

South Carolina’s agreement focuses on the car industry and life sciences, as well as clean energy, infrastructure, real estate and advanced technologies.

The deal has helped the state to “gain a better understanding of government procurement and introducing companies to become potential vendors,” the Department of Commerce said.

Since signing it, South Carolina said it had developed new relationships between business, government and economic development groups, hosted two joint working group meetings, and opened an international office in London.

South Carolina confirmed it had been approached by the UK initially, and found this to be “a timely opportunity to engage more deeply with a country we felt we needed to show more attention.”

Tactic for a wider trade deal

US state negotiators believe the UK has been using state-level agreements to to pave the way for a potential wider trade deal with the White House.

Meredith Broadbent, former chair of the US International Trade Commission, said that the state level negotiations were a “novel idea” which “grew out of frustration that the Biden administration didn’t want to do a regular trade deal with the UK.

“A lot of countries wanted to trade with the US and do a trade agreement, but the UK actually went out to the states and found ones that were interested what it does,” she said.

“The thinking was is that if the federal government is blowing you off, you put grassroots pressure and build the fabric of support for these negotiations at the state level.”

Is a UK-US trade agreement realistic?

The ability to do a trade deal with the US was touted as a key benefit of Brexit, and was the first major, wholly new agreement pursued by the UK after leaving the EU.

However, negotiations began in 2020 and are yet to yield significant results.

Meredith Broadbent, who spent 20 years working with the US Ways and Means Committee, said that many within the US Government were supportive of a traditional trade agreement with the UK.

“Within the administration, there’s a lot of sentiment to reward the good things that UK is doing,” she added.

This is in part due to “frustration” with Europe as to what the US perceives as “dictatorial regulations” and an unwillingness to adopt American standards.

Michael Plouffe, associate professor at UCK, said that a UK-US trade deal was “very unlikely”, with the UK in a weak bargaining position.

“Successive Conservative governments were unable to make significant progress in talks with a less nationalistic Biden administration,” he said.

“The Trump administration will demand far more of the UK than would be politically desirable for the Starmer government, seeking to use its tariff wall as negotiating leverage. [US] Targets here [in the UK] could be wide-ranging, such as VAT reform or changes to speech protections.

“Within the context of previous negotiations, this would revive concerns around a weakening of British environmental and labour protections, privacy and data-protection rules, privatisation of public services, such as the NHS, and agricultural and sanitary/phytosanitary matters, like the chlorinated chicken issue.”

“Given the farmers’ protests earlier this year over tax reforms, further alienating the agricultural sector over relaxation of agricultural regulations and standards would not be a good political move.”

Broadbent said that the state-level agreements “reflect a grassroots groundswell support” for trade with the UK, “in an environment where so far, the people that can really negotiate these agreements – the USTR (Office of the United States Trade Representative) and the President aren’t doing it.”

The deals are popular with state governors as they generate investment and offer growth opportunities for local businesses, so more should be expected over the coming months or years.

“Why wouldn’t [states want a deal]? You build some relationships for your state’s businesses at a time when we’re breaking a lot of relationships with our trading partners,” added Broadbent, who is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

However, Plouffe and Bain agreed that state-levels deals were unlikely to change Trump’s mind on his trading approach to the UK, as there “haven’t been many indications that the Trump administration is particularly receptive to outside voices”, Plouffre said.