US-UK trade deal: the long, secretive back story

British government has spent £227,000 fighting transparency on details of Trump trade deals

By Nick Dearden

This morning’s news headlines have been dominated by one story: the prospect of a trade deal between the US and the UK. Donald Trump is expected to announce the deal from the White House at 3pm British time.

Details of the negotiations have been shrouded in secrecy for months: to ‘protect the national interest’, say Keir Starmer’s ministers this morning as they do the media rounds. But even after this afternoon’s big reveal many questions are likely to remain.

Will this be the final deal or essentially a tariff package? Will we have to accept US food with far lower safety and health standards? What will it mean for corporate access to the NHS? Will the Digital Services Tax be watered down for Musk and the other Big Tech billionaires? There may be headlines, but expect them to be thin on detail.

You’d be forgiven for having a sense of deja vu.

Back in 2019, in the middle of a UK General Election campaign, leaked details of a trade deal with Trump’s first administration appeared on the social media site, Reddit. The documents revealed what many had long feared: secretive US-UK trade talks posed serious threats to public services.

The leaked papers, held aloft by then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at a press conference, showed that despite public assurances, the government was entertaining provisions that could lead to higher medicine prices and deeper access for US corporations into the health service.

What made the leak especially explosive was how it contrasted with the heavily redacted versions of the same papers released just days earlier—documents we had fought for over 18 months to obtain through formal transparency requests. Entire pages had been blacked out, hiding not just details, but the very existence of whole topics under negotiation. With little recourse, and an election looming, we took the government to court.

On election day in 2019, we entered the courtroom. The leaked documents became central to our case. They proved what campaigners had long argued: secrecy in trade talks doesn't prevent controversy—it provokes it. The government's refusal to acknowledge the documents, even under oath, only underscored how committed they were to keeping the public in the dark.

Six years on, we are still in court—now at the Supreme Court—trying to access the most basic information about these talks. Since then, Labour has gone from criticising trade secrecy in opposition to defending it in government. The deals in question have mostly been signed or dropped, yet the public remains locked out of the details.

So far, the government has spent £227,000 fighting our transparency case, employing top barristers to stop us receiving information as basic as meeting agendas. That figure doesn’t even include the Information Commissioner’s costs or internal government expenses—meaning the true cost to taxpayers is far higher. We are currently awaiting a Supreme Court decision - so the case is not yet over.

But the real issue isn't the money. It's what this secrecy enables.

This time around, there is even less transparency about the trade deal with Trump. MPs have had no debate. There is no published mandate, no red lines, no scrutiny, and likely no vote on the final deal. Leaks have been even harder to come by—an effort to protect both Trump and Starmer from political fallout.

Yet what’s on the table affects all of us. British pig farmers have now written to trade minister Douglas Alexander to seek “urgent clarity” on whether the deal will uphold animal welfare standards.

But food safety is just the beginning. The UK appears ready to sign a “digital deal” that could include rolling back the digital services tax—a rare tool that allows us to collect tax from Big Tech. Even worse, it could lock us into policies that favour the unchecked growth of tech monopolies: deregulated AI, increased corporate access to NHS data, and restrictions on our ability to rein in Silicon Valley giants.

Rather than using trade to shape new technologies in the public interest, we’re handing power to corporations whose influence already far outweighs their accountability.

And this isn’t just about the US. Across the board, trade deals are evolving into mechanisms for embedding corporate-friendly rules into national policy—rules that would struggle to pass through open parliamentary scrutiny. Hidden in technical language, negotiated behind closed doors, and implemented without a vote, these deals sidestep democracy entirely.

Just look at the Australia deal signed under Boris Johnson. It led to £10 billion in concessions after a private meeting he appeared not to fully understand—an outcome still causing anger among UK farmers today.

Worse may be coming unless we stop treating trade negotiations as a matter of royal prerogative. We need a modern, democratic process for international agreements—transparent, accountable, and inclusive. But Starmer has shown that such reform won’t be gifted by those in power. It must be demanded.

If we care about democracy, accountability, and public interest, this is where we must draw the line.

Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justice Now, author of Trade Secrets and spokesperson for the Stop Trump Coalition.