Washington Edition

This is Washington Edition, the newsletter about money, power and politics in the nation’s capital. Today, senior editor Joe Sobczyk looks at the president’s announcement of an agreement on trade with the UK. Sign up here and follow us at @bpolitics. Email our editors here.

Just a Start

Just how “full” and how “comprehensive” is the trade framework with the UK that President Donald Trump announced today?

At this point, the president’s debut trade agreement is more about the hype than the substance, as Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey and Josh Wingrove report in this analysis of the deal: Trump’s Scant UK Deal Shows Limits of Frenzied Trade Strategy

As he’s faced declining poll numbers and jittery financial markets because of uncertainty over his trade policy, Trump has been eager to show some results from his wide-ranging trade war. For weeks he’s been touting talks with multiple countries and promising imminent deals.

However, after the carefully staged announcement ceremony in the Oval Office, which included a call-in from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, it was clear that what Trump was presenting was something less than a full-fledged trade agreement.

The US will get increased market access and a faster customs process for exports to the UK, while the UK will get limited tariff relief on autos, steel and aluminum. But some of the bigger trade issues were pushed off. The UK will maintain its digital services tax hitting major US tech firms, and Trump’s plans for sweeping pharmaceutical tariff were left for later.

And Trump is keeping his baseline tariff of 10% on UK goods.

As Starmer noted, the two sides still need to “finish ironing out some of the details.”

Nonetheless, the agreement — along with Trump saying tariffs on China could be lowered if talks this weekend go well — cheered Wall Street. The S&P 500 rallied as much as 1.5% in the immediate aftermath before subsiding some in the last stretch of trading.

Read: Trump Says ‘Substantive’ China Talks Could Yield Tariff Cut

And Trump now has gotten the ball rolling on bringing other nations to the negotiating table, something he’s said his tariff plan is designed to do. The administration has promoted talks with India, Japan and South Korea.

Almost everyone, though, wants to see what happens with China after talks this weekend in Switzerland led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng.

“I hope the UK agreement will be the first of many,” Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told reporters. “Whatever transpires between the US and China will be an important part of this story.” — Joe Sobczyk

Don’t Miss

Trump is pushing Republicans in Congress to increase tax rates on some of the wealthiest Americans as a way to offset other cuts in his signature economic package.

The administration said it’s developing a fast-track process to screen foreign investments in the US, an effort officials expect could smooth the way for billions from Persian Gulf wealth funds.

Senate Democrats blocked stablecoin legislation backed by the digital assets industry amid a furor over Trump’s extensive and growing portfolio of crypto ventures.

Under relentless attack from Trump, Jerome Powell needs all the allies he can get — and he has plenty in Congress, including among Republicans who show little appetite for ditching the Federal Reserve chief.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called for building six new air traffic control centers and replacing more than 600 radars to overhaul the country’s aging system that manages some 45,000 flights each day.

Trump’s expansive use of executive power has faced at least 328 lawsuits as of May 1 with judges halting his policies far more often than they allowed them, testing the constitutional balance of power.

US labor productivity fell in the first quarter for the first time in nearly three years as economic output declined, snapping a streak of gains that have helped temper the inflationary impact from employment costs.

Americans’ expectations for inflation in the medium-term climbed to an almost three-year high in April while their views on the job market worsened, according to a monthly survey from the New York Fed.

White men no longer make up the majority of board seats at the largest US companies, a historic shift reflecting decades of pressure to diversify the upper ranks of corporate leadership.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Republicans are discussing raising the state and local tax deduction cap to $30,000 — among other options — as they seeks to resolve disagreements on the details of Trump’s tax package.

Along with tariffs that threaten export markets and immigration policies that could limit the seasonal workforce, US farmers are confronting cuts to numerous federal programs that aid their industry.

Artificial intelligence servers guzzle water for cooling and for power, yet data centers in the US and around the world are disproportionately built in highly water-stressed areas.

Our journalists, your questions: Don't miss your chance to engage directly with Bloomberg reporters and editors in two Live Q&A conversations happening tomorrow. At 9 a.m. EDT, we'll be talking about the US-UK trade deal. And later in the day at 1 p.m. EDT, senior investigative reporter Jason Leopold will discuss how he uses public record requests to investigate the US government, including what he's learned so far in the Trump administration.

Watch & Listen

Today on Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power early edition at 1 p.m., hosts Kailey Leinz and Michael Shepard interviewed Christie Traina, professor of Catholic theology at Fordham University, about the issues that will be facing the new pope.

On the program at 5 p.m., Kailey and Saleha Mohsin talk with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about the trade framework with the UK announced today.

On the Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier and Sara Forden join host Sarah Holder to unpack the two big trials under way seeking to rein in Silicon Valley. Will the antitrust cases against Google and Meta help innovation flourish, or kill America’s chances at AI dominance? Listen on iHeart, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Chart of the Day

While recent advances in humanoid robots are getting a lot of attention, the real action is in industrial robots, which are getting installed on America's factory floors at a quick pace. A preliminary estimate by the International Federation of Robotics shows that 13,747 new industrial robots were added by the US automotive firms last year. That's 38 new robots daily and represents a 10.7% rise annually. The result is the US has one of the most automated car industries in the world, running ahead of China, says Takayuki Ito, president of the federation. China, though, is closing fast. Japan leads in overall manufacturers usage, but China is second as the country's national robotics strategy has pushed manufacturing industry installations by a total of about 280,000 units per year between 2021 and 2023, compared with 34,300 in the US in 2024. China also has a high robot density -- 470 robots per 10,000 employees in manufacturing compared with 295 robots per 10,000 employees in the US, according to IFR data. — Alex Tanzi

What’s Next

Bessent and Greer will meet with a Chinese delegation this weekend in Switzerland.

The consumer price index for April will be reported Tuesday.

Trump begins a three-day trip to the Middle East Tuesday.

Data on retail sales for April will be released Wednesday.

The producer price index for April also will be reported Wednesday.

The University of Michigan’s preliminary reading of consumer sentiment for this month will be reported May 16.

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