Unable to access generated variables

Hi i need to build minor versions of containers into a folder tagged with the major release number.

to do this im using release tags - e.g release-1.0.1

for various reasons major is only one decimal place
major is called release-1.0
minor is called release-1.0.1

to get these variables i am using CIRCLE_TAG and then running: - env MAJOR_VER=(echo “$CIRCLE_TAG” | cut -c 1-11)

i can see when this runs that the correct environmental variable is created in the variables list
however when i come to echo it out it isnt visible.

What am i doing wrong?