NPR.

This is the indicator from planet money.

I'm Whalen Wong.

And I'm Patty Hirsch.

As President Trump strides about the world,

slapping the cudgel of tariffs into the palm of his hand,

America's trade partners are rushing about the place like potential victims in a slasher movie,

wondering who's going to be next?

One country that's uniquely unsure about its status, the UK.

It has a strong and deep strategic relationship with the U.S., which is good, but it's also tightly

bound to Europe on trade, which is not so good. Trump is not a fan of the EU. He says that

their trade relations are unfair to the U.S. and need adjusting. Tariffs look like a real possibility.

And with Trump signing an executive order for a 25% tariff on all steel coming into

the US, that threat became real for the UK steel industry. Has the UK been caught between a rock

and a hard place, between its two largest trading partners? What can it do to keep Trump sweet?

It's coming up after the break.

The U.S. and the UK have a special relationship,

a sense of shared history, values, and culture,

and extensive cooperation on foreign policy, security issues and trade.

So when the president of the United States makes an announcement like this... So the UK is way out of line and we'll see the UK, but European Union is really out of line.

A bit of a word salad there.

I mean, we've been eating a lot of those lately. And you can imagine the fristle this must have sent up the back

...