Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Newsmax on Thursday that the trade deal struck with the United Kingdom earlier in the day is a "huge, huge thing" for the United States as it opens markets to American exporters that will be worth $5 billion a year.
Further, Lutnick told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" that the deal got done only because of President Donald Trump's tariffs.
"We've never been able to sell beef, soft drinks, machinery. They put these tariffs and nontariff barriers; they just wouldn't let our beef in. They wouldn't let our vegetables in. They wouldn't let our fruits in," Lutnick said. "So they've agreed to open their markets to the tune of $5 billion a year.
"Our exporters can now access their markets. And that's a huge, huge thing. And it was only President Trump's tariff policy that allowed that to happen."
In return, the U.S. had to agree to relent on automobile tariffs.
"You know, autos was a really, really tough spot because our model for autos is, if you don't make autos here, you have to pay 25%. And so the fact that the U.K. convinced us to let 100,000 cars come in at only 10% was a huge change that the president had to make that decision," Lutnick said. "And that got ... the ball rolling to bring this deal home. The president decided, OK, we'll do that. We'll protect their car industry provided they open the market the way we want them to open it. And that's how it works."
Moving forward, Lutnick said the administration will have templates on smaller deals but will have to buckle down on line-by-line specifics with bigger countries.
"We're going to have templates for small countries where we'll pick one or two countries, we'll get a deal done with them, and then we'll sort of send that to all the other countries who are similar and say, Does this work for you?" he said.
"And then, of course, the large countries, they're just bespoke. You have to do one by one by one and work it through with them and work it out with them and go through the details. There's no way you can do it swiftly if it's a giant country."
Lutnick stressed it takes time to get trade deals done right the first time.
"We could rush and say, We have a deal done with X, Y, and Z, but the deal won't be as good, and it won't be done. And our view is, Let's get the right deals, let's get them done, let's do this once and only once. Let's do it for America," he said.
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.