Faisal Islam: The UK’s Trump trade deal no longer looks like the world’s best.

It’s been a long road for President Donald Trump to justify imposing a tariff wall around the US, including on key allies.

From the opioid crisis to illegal immigration, then the need to bring manufacturing back to American shores, the list goes on.

In Trump’s second term, almost every month there is a new justification for the trade tariffs he wants to impose on allies.

Some have been overturned by the courts, others by economics, and some even by their own logic. And so, Trump has now effectively sued dozens of trading partners over trade in goods manufactured using forced labor.

As one industry person put it, these are “authority-seeking fares.” The forced labor line has pitted President Trump’s tariffs against congressional or court challenges.

In practice, the tariffs are surprisingly similar to those imposed by a country for completely different reasons than the previous round of tariffs.

The good news for the UK is that the regime remains exactly as it was before.

What has changed is that our closest neighbors in the EU now have a better deal than before, and in turn are better off than the UK.

While the UK and EU each seem to have a 10% rate, the EU is a flat rate, while the UK applies tariffs to a variety of goods, including footwear and textiles.

The government made successful side deals with the help of drugs, steel, aluminum, cars and King Charles whiskey.

At the end of this process, however, the overall trade-weighted effective EU tariff rate (8.5%) may be slightly lower than the UK’s (6.8%).

Not so important, but the help given by the first agreement and the post-Brexit trade freedoms seems to be short-lived.

British Chambers of Commerce trade expert William Bain points to the competitiveness of EU exporters entering the US in some sectors.

The EU got better treatment by passing a ban on forced labor goods, which the UK did not.

This is not an indictment of the use of forced labor in supply chains. It’s about passing specific laws that reflect the United States’ ban on forced labor in products used in its supply chain.