'He's posting up a storm': CNN reporter lowers expectations for Trump's 'big' announcement
President Donald Trump has been hyping a "major" trade deal with the United Kingdom, but officials and experts alike have been cautioning that it will fall well short of the "full and comprehensive" pact he's teasing.
The president invited reporters to an Oval Office announcement Thursday morning, and hours ahead of that event he teased new details about the deal, but British officials told the Wall Street Journal they were surprised by his plans and say the deal is not comprehensive, which was also confirmed by CNN's Alayna Treene.
"We are going to learn more about it at 10 a.m. when the president gathers in the Oval Office with some United Kingdom officials for this, as the president is touting it, 'major trade agreement,'" Treene said. "Now, of course, this is welcome news to global markets, but even more welcome news to the White House and the Trump administration, which has really been facing increased pressure to announce any sort of progress and movement on these trade negotiations, particularly as we continue to see the economic turmoil from the president's tariff policies."
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"Now this trade agreement comes almost a month to the day that the president was forced to roll back his reciprocal tariffs because it had sent different markets spiraling," she added, "and so this should ease some of that."
Trump posted about the announcement Wednesday night and then twice by a little after 6 a.m. EST Thursday, and he made three other posts attacking Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, blaming former president Joe Biden for "Air Traffic problems" and promising "the Golden Age of America is coming."
"He is posting up a storm this morning," Treene said. "I want to read to you one of his latest posts on this. He said, quote, 'the agreement with the United Kingdom is a full and comprehensive one that will cement the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom for many years to come because of our longtime history and allegiance together. It is a great honor to have the United Kingdom as our first announcement,' he says. 'Many other deals, which are in various stages of negotiations, will be to follow.'"
Treene cautioned that the announced pact would likely just be a framework for negotiations to follow.
"Now, just to be clear here, despite his rhetoric and the administration's rhetoric that this is going to be a full and comprehensive deal, we know that trade agreements, real trade agreements actually take a lot of time," she said. "They are complex negotiations. They go over the minutia of different you know, tariff goods, non-tariff barriers, etc., and so what we're likely to see today at 10 a.m. is some sort of memorandum of understanding. They'll probably lower some tariffs in the in the time being, but it will take longer likely to really hash out the very specific details."
"Now, as you mentioned, we don't actually know a lot of what is going into this agreement, but the Financial Times actually had a great story earlier this week laying out some of the parameters," Treene added. "They say that Trump is lining up tax breaks for tech giants, cheaper access to UK car and agriculture markets for American exports, and, in return, the president is expected to lower steel and automobile tariffs, and so that's likely some of what we're going to see at 10 a.m. when they announce this agreement."
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