Britain’s Starmer warns against Trump tariffs

LONDON — Britain’s prime minister warned Donald Trump against slapping tariffs on U.K. goods.

In a committee grilling by MPs Thursday, Keir Starmer was pressed on his relationship with the U.S. president-elect, who has promised to impose steep duties on imports to his country.

Starmer refused to get into whether he has raised the issue with Trump, or shed light on how the U.K. might respond. But he said he was “alive to the danger” that such levies pose.

Trump has promised to use executive authority on his first day in office to slap 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports — and he has promised new tariffs of up to 60 percent on Chinese imports.

Other trading partners, including the U.K. and European Union, are nervously eyeing the plan, and the U.K. has some retaliatory measures it used in the first Trump term at its disposal.

“It won’t come as any surprise to you that I am not a fan of tariffs and therefore we have to make sure that we avoid tariffs,” Starmer told the House of Commons liaison committee Thursday.

Asked if he could dissuade Trump from taking such a step, Starmer said he wouldn’t guess at what the president-elect will do once in office — but made clear that he’s personally opposed to the concept of throwing up trade barriers.

“I won’t go into the details of what we discussed but am I alive to the danger of tariffs? Yes of course,” Starmer said. “I am against tariffs. But I am not going to speculate as to what the incoming president might do.”

Starmer spoke to Trump by phone yesterday, in a call that included discussion of the war in Ukraine and the economy. It followed on from a longer, in-person dinner between Starmer and Trump in October in New York.

The British prime minister added that he hopes to “improve” on Britain’s trading relationship with the U.S. Talks on a full-fat post-Brexit free trade agreement with the U.S. were abandoned during the Biden administration.