The chancellor said Starmer was focused on trying to ‘de-escalate and get the best deal for Britain’
At his press conference on Monday Keir Starmer played down the prospect of the UK imposing tariffs on the US in retaliation for the “Greenland tariffs” that Donald Trump says he will impose on the UK and seven other Nato countries that have opposed his plan to buy the Danish self-governing territory. Starmer said that he did not want a trade war, and tariffs would not be in anyone’s interests.
But No 10 later made it clear that Starmer was not 100% ruling out tariffs. And, in his interview on the Today programme this morning, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, also refused to rule them out – although he did say it would be wrong to issue threats and “ratchet up the temperature”.
The EU is considering retaliatory tariffs, and at Davos yesterday several EU leaders said Europe should be more confrontational in response to the Trump threats.
In an interview with Sky News this morning from Davos, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, also played down the prospect of the UK imposing retaliatory tariffs on the US. Asked what her message was to Trump, she replied:
