Britain has no right to laugh at the Trump-EU trade deal

In a world where Donald Trump's tariffs and trade wars make everyone a loser, are there any winners from his latest deal, sealed by a handshake with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in a ballroom at one of the US president's Scottish golf courses, of all places?

- SEAN O'GRADY

One very clear loser is Von der Leyen herself. If body language is anything to go by, she looked like she’d been badly bullied by the Big Orange Man - and, truthfully, so she had. In her own clipped remarks, she admitted that a reduction in tariffs to 15 per cent, while “not to be underestimated”, was “the best we could get”.

Emmanuel Macron has declared the US-EU trade deal a “dark day” for Europe - and you can understand why.

A general tariff level of 15 per cent - better than the 20 per cent proposed by Trump on his infamous “Liberation Day” in April, and much better than the 30 per cent he was threatening not long ago - is still prohibitive. It is certainly way above the 2 to 3 per cent levels that most EU exporters used to face.