What does Trump’s victory mean for global Britain?

Jonathan Edwards

New Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch couldn’t hide her glee at her first appearance at Prime Ministers Questions following the election victory of Donald Trump.

During her first exchange with Keir Starmer, she challenged the Prime Minister to apologise to the President elect following comments made by the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy.

In a magazine article in 2018 he described Trump as a “woman hating, neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath…a threat to the international order”.

Considering the vindictiveness of the President elect and the war of words between the UK Government and one of Trumps closest current associated, Elon Musk, you could say it was a bit of a free political hit for Badenoch.

Brexit

Whilst the second Trump Presidency is undoubtedly a challenge for the Labour UK Government, it also creates more problems for those in the UK who have led the British State along the Brexit path.

The post Brexit vision of the Brexiteers was of a Global Britain, swashbuckling its way around the world signing free trade agreements unshackled from EU trade policy. Being kind it was a romantic aspiration, being less sympathetic it was completely irrational.

The record to date isn’t too promising, it seems that the new Department for Business and Trade’s primary work has been based on replicating the EU trade deals that the UK was previously part of. Some would argue on less favourable terms for UK based businesses. Brexit has not turned the UK into a trading superpower. In fact, exports, a key element of economic growth have declined substantially.

The London School of Economics estimate that the deals signed so far are only expected to improve the economic wealth of the UK by less than one tenth of one percent each. That is miniscule. Meanwhile trade in goods with Europe has collapsed. According to the LSE the UK has the weakest growth in goods exports in the G7.

Free trade

The essential point for the purposes of this article however, is that Global Britain was based on an age of open free trade across the world. The second Trump Presidency many experts argue will see a new global economic age based on protectionism. The President elect is poised to introduce a 20% levy on all US imports. The inevitable result of a policy such as this will be trade reprisals. In the words of the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, the pro trade world economy as it is currently structured could well fragment. Most analysts would agree that now is not a good time to be outside the worlds most powerful and successful trade bloc, i.e the EU economic frameworks.

The Brexiteers should be well accustomed to building trade walls as essentially that’s what Brexit has achieved in terms of trade with Europe, however I regress. The key challenge to policymakers as we enter this new economic age is how the UK is going to navigate the stormy waters that are fast approaching.

Ivan Rogers, the former UK Ambassador to the EU has said that British Government is going to have to choose between the US and the EU. He was quoted in the Observer:

“Any free trade agreement that Trump and his team could ever propose to the UK would have to contain major proposals on US access to the UK agricultural market and on veterinary standards. It would not pass Congress without them. If the UK signed on the dotted line, that’s the end of the Starmer proposed veterinary deal with the EU. You can’t have both: you have to choose.”

No brainer 

Considering EU trade even after Brexit is far more important than US trade it seems a no brainer.

Others believe that some incremental gains could be made as the UK could never sign a fully fledged trade deal with the States due to the likely agricultural protocols, and that current UK red lines in relation to the EU makes re-entry into their frameworks impossible. Peter Mandelson has said something similar in his pitch for the US Ambassadorship, that the UK could do transactional deals with the US on issues such as data sharing.

This is the reality of the situation facing the UK trade policy following Brexit in the second age of Trump. There isn’t a plentiful bounty on the horizon only slivers of opportunity.

The world is about to change very quickly. What’s the new plan of the Brexiteers? Kemi Badenoch should perhaps be a little less jovial. The UK is increasingly in a very isolated and lonely place in a world that is getting more hostile by the day, and as a Brexit true believer this is on her.

Jonathan Edwards was the MP for Carmarthen East & Dinefwr 2010-2024