President Donald Trump has dismissed critics who have asked how many deals he has brokered after he paused some tariffs last month to allow for negotiations.

The U.S. is working toward finalizing a narrow trade deal with the United Kingdom, President Donald Trump said Thursday, a small step as the White House pursues an aggressive tariff agenda across the globe.

According to a document furnished by the U.K., the agreement will see duties on U.K. car imports reduced from 27.5% to 10%, while tariffs on U.K. steel imports will be dropped.

In return, the U.K. is lowering trade barriers on U.S. beef imports and ethanol.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Trump approved the deal Wednesday night, according to a source familiar with the discussions, concluding weeks of negotiations that included U.K. representatives in Washington, D.C., pushing for the final agreement.

Trump has long sought a full trade agreement with the U.K. dating back to his first term, though he backed off after that country sought a rapprochement with the European Union in 2018.

The announcement is the first pact Trump has signed with another country since his shock “Liberation Day” speech last month announcing unprecedented worldwide tariffs. While he has since announced a 90-day pause on country-by-country duties, markets remain wary — and businesses frustrated — by his erratic approach to trade policy.

Trump and many members of his administration have boasted for weeks that countries were rushing to sign new trade deals to avoid outsize tariffs. But Trump has also unilaterally softened many of the tariffs he initially announced while recently shifting his tone on whether the many dozens of deals necessary would come to fruition.

The president has said he intends to sign individual trade deals as a means of blunting the impact of his tariffs — yet has offered conflicting accounts about how such deals will play out. In an interview with Time magazine last month, Trump said he had “made 200 deals,” an impossible figure given that there aren’t that many countries in existence. Then on Tuesday, during his meeting with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump indicated deals would not even be necessary.

“Everyone says, ‘When, when, when, are you going to sign deals?’ We don’t have to sign deals!” Trump said.

He continued: “They want a piece of our market. We don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market. They want a piece of our market.”

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said no formal negotiations had even begun with China, the country with which markets are most eager to see a deal enacted, given how much the U.S. relies on Chinese imports.

High-level meetings are slated for this weekend, though they won’t necessarily include trade negotiations.

In remarks on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the tariffs had created a “very, very uncertain” economic environment.

“The tariff increases announced so far has been significantly larger than anticipated,” Powell said. “All of these policies are still evolving, however, and their effects on the economy remain highly uncertain.”

After several reports naming the U.K., Trump himself this morning confirmed the pact was with Britain.

Investors remain sensitive to any sign that the president will relent on his tariffs plan or at least provide a more concrete picture of their implementation. Stocks initially surged in premarket trading Thursday once the U.K. deal was announced by Trump on social media late Wednesday, but gave up gains after multiple outlets reported later Thursday morning that the deal would be “limited in scope” and “general” in terms.

In a subsequent post, Trump said the agreement would be a “full and comprehensive one that will cement the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom for many years to come.”

He added that “many other deals” will follow, some of which are in “serious stages of negotiation.”

“Because of our long time history and allegiance together, it is a great honor to have the United Kingdom as our FIRST announcement,” the president said.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that foreign nations are eager to ink a deal with Washington to avoid the worst effects of the wave of levies he announced last month, but this would be the first such deal. Only four countries import more U.S. goods than the U.K., according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Trump dangled the possibility of a U.K. trade deal in his first term and was a vocal supporter of Brexit, suggesting that some of the groundwork had been done before this year’s tariffs.

The New York Times was the first to report Wednesday that Trump planned to announce a deal with Britain, citing three people familiar with the deal.

The deal would be a boost for Trump, who said nations were “dying to make a deal” in the wake of his tariffs announcement on April 2.

Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro said at the time there could be “90 deals in 90 days” — but 36 days on, there have been none, while countries across the world complained that the tariffs were unfair and uncalled for, most notably China, and as Trump seeks to calm fears over price increases at home.

Trump has faced ongoing criticism that tariffs could raise prices for consumers and hurt the economy, and has acknowledged himself that the tax on imports could lead to higher prices. The tariffs have also proven to be politically damaging, with Trump’s handling of tariffs earning him especially low approval numbers compared to other issues in recent public surveys, including CNBC and NBC News Stay Tuned polls.

Meanwhile, the U.K. is keen to sign a deal with the U.S. — its biggest trading partner — to alleviate the effect of Trump’s tariffs on its auto, food and drink, and steel industries. Its total annual trade with the U.S. is 314.6 billion pounds ($417.6 billion), 196 billion pounds ($260 billion) of which is exports to America.

Britain left the 27-nation European Union trading bloc in 2020 — the so-called Brexit agreement — and has been searching for deals to replace the frictionless trade it previously enjoyed across the continent. This week, the U.K. announced a trade deal with India that it said would increase the annual gross domestic product by 4.8 billion pounds ($6.3 billion).

JPMorgan said in a note early Thursday that the scope of the U.K. deal was limited and the economic impact for Britain would be “very small,” adding that the political choreography of the move appeared to take precedence over its substance.

JPMorgan added that it was unlikely U.S. tariffs on British goods would be eliminated entirely and could be set at the 10% baseline Trump has imposed on all other countries.

Separately, the Bank of England announced Thursday that it would cut British interest rates from 4.5% to 4.25%.