A trade war with Trump helps no one - too bad we're in one already

Over the weekend, Trump threatened tariffs on countries across Europe, including the UK. All in an attempt to bully us into backing his latest megalomaniacal desire, control over Greenland.

Seemingly attempting to cling on to the shell of our so-called ‘special relationship’ with the US, Starmer opened by paying heed to the trust between the UK and US, and claimed that the UK has “secured good trading terms in key sectors”. But that claim falls apart under scrutiny.

The reality is that, to date, in an attempt to avoid Trump’s tariff warfare, the UK has rolled over to Trump in an arrangement that removes the NHS's ability to get good value for money on new medicines. We now risk paying an additional £3 billion for overpriced drugs, diverting much-needed healthcare spending to boost pharmaceutical companies' profits every year. That has real impacts - with health economists calculating that this will lead to almost 16,000 additional deaths every year.

Meanwhile, a separate UK-US technology pact means the UK risks handing over all sorts of powers to Big Tech oligarchs. On the table here is our ability to tax Big Tech, and to regulate the use and development of technologies - including AI - which are increasingly being used to make life and death decisions about welfare, immigration, online safety and policing. These are real decisions that affect all of our lives, made in negotiations closed to public or political scrutiny.

It’s little wonder that Trump believes that he can get whatever he wants by throwing his toys out of the pram and threatening tariffs again. After all, it’s worked for him before. Starmer urgently needs to change course. The only way to defeat a bully is to stand up to them, or they’ll keep coming back for more.

While Starmer stated today in response to Trump’s latest threats that “the use of tariffs against allies is completely wrong”, his solution to this is to simply, in his own words, “keep dialogue open”. His justification is that a trade war is in no one’s interest. That might be true - but sadly, we already have one. The only way out is to stand up to Trump. And we have the tools to do that.

The EU is discussing a trade ‘bazooka’ to retaliate against Trump. That means not simply tit-for-tat tariffs, but also constraining the ability of US finance to access our markets and of multinationals to access public procurement, as well as limiting our corporations under US intellectual property rules.

This would work because it would target Trump’s friends in the oligarchy more than anyone else, applying real pressure on the administration. What’s more, some of these measures would be good for us in the long term, too, allowing us to break the stranglehold of US multinational corporations, such as Big Tech companies, over our economy and society.

Trump is not invincible, but we need some backbone to end his bullying and begin to build an economy which is more independent and secure from far-right leaders like Trump.

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Anita Bhadani is media manager at the UK based NGO, Global Justice Now.

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