From Sir Keir Starmer’s perspective, two big trade deals have been clinched in this past week. The first was with India on Tuesday — followed on Thursday by a partial, as far as the UK is concerned, roll-back on the global tariff onslaught unleashed by the Trump administration on April 2. To Starmer, this all showed he leads a government “that steps up, not stands aside”.
However, our prime minister had to go back a very long way to justify his optimism. He continued: “As VE Day reminds us, the UK has no greater ally than the United States. So I am delighted that eight decades on, under President Trump, the special relationship remains a force for economic and national security.”
Was Starmer, I wondered, filled with that same optimism when, the day after April Fools’ Day, he had to make sense of that chart brandished by Donald Trump in the White House garden — the one displaying every tariff that every other economy on this planet would face to trade in future with Trump’s USA, with some rampant take-it-or-leave-it hikes already factored in?
The predictable backlash has already forced a grudging Trumpian rethink. But with more that three years of his presidency yet to unfold, who would bet on what’s left of his time in office not being marked by more of his fantasies being pursued with equally reckless vigour?
He has already tried to woo neighbour Canada into becoming the 51st state in his union. But Mark Carney’s arrival as prime minister there has left that fantasy to wither on the electoral vine. Greenland has also rebuffed Trump’s entreaties.
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Might President Trump, whose advisers are actively working to put flesh on an unprecedented second state visit to the UK, this time with Scotland as the main focus, deliver such an opportunity? This second invitation, penned by King Charles himself, was hand delivered by Starmer when he and Trump met in the White House back in February.
The main timing focus appears to be this autumn, with September the most likely month. Initially, the venues suggested by the King were either Balmoral or Dumfries House in Ayrshire. There are, however, other suggestions that Trump would prefer Windsor, where he has fond memories of spending time with the late Queen Elizabeth.
As for commercial opportunities, Trump already owns two golf complexes in Scotland, one at Menie on the Aberdeenshire coast, the other at Turnberry in Ayrshire. Neither appears to be making any money, but perhaps the man who thinks he has perfected the art of the deal has his eye on some forgotten corner of the House of Windsor’s considerable property assets.
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Of course no political leader in any one democracy gets to choose who is in power elsewhere. But when the electoral lottery throws up an ego as vast as Trump’s as leader of the biggest western democracy of all, the room for manoeuvre will be frustratingly small. And so it is proving as Starmer’s government tries to navigate its way out of the tariff assault that Trump’s second US administration has imposed on friend and foe alike around the rest of the world.
The jobs that Labour claims to have saved at carmaker Jaguar Land Rover, and through tariff reductions on exports of steel and aluminium to the US, are being offset by lower tariffs on exports of American beef and ethanol in the other direction. Trade in many other goods is still facing hefty tariff hikes. Calling the whole outcome “historic”, as both our prime minister and his chancellor did on Thursday, is achievement inflation on a heroic scale.
As the Trump administration in Washington reflects on that outcome, it will surely feel emboldened to turn the tariff screw even tighter. After all, this US president regards that T word as one of his favourite concepts. I doubt he’ll spend much time reflecting on the “historic” deal that his UK counterparts think they have struck with the USA. Trump will simply feel free to hike tariffs even higher on American imports whenever he thinks he can get away with it.