Let’s be nice to Donald Trump. Calling the President of the United States and leader of the free world an orange-faced man-baby is not going to make him more cuddly.
Yet I still hear political commentators using those words. It’s pointless, potentially damaging to Britain’s interests and juvenile.
They might argue Trump's team has not been very nice about us. But our new Washington ambassador Peter Mandelson says, in an attempt to cool hot tempers, that's down to too much booze and too little maturity.
Or as his lordship put it in a long interview with the Financial Times, "young minds ploughing their own furrow on a sea of too much inauguration alcohol.”
Disagree with Trump by all means, but let’s do it in a grown-up way. I disagree with him launching a trade war with his threats of 25 per cent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico and imposing 10 per cent on China.
And I’m gobsmacked by his proposal to shift 1.8 million Gaza Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan. Perhaps his next move will be to announce that the 11 million undocumented migrants in the US he intends to deport will be joining them.
But as tariffs are happening, and the wholesale uprooting of populations isn’t, tariffs are what should immediately concern us.
Surely Trump must see that they will also damage the American people in higher prices and lower growth.
it’s not just Mexican beer and tequila which would become more expensive, but Canadian lumber for housing, and cars would go up around £2,000 as parts come from both Canada and Mexico.
Trump has slapped Canada and Mexico with tariffsREUTERSWhich is why this is beginning to look like a spot of macho muscle-flexing from the new US president simply to prove he means business. Yet bullying other countries to get what he wants, even temporarily, has unpredictable geopolitical consequences.
So far the Colombians have caved in to him, and Canada and Mexico followed to get a month-long stay of execution, though Mexico’s shrewd president, Claudia Sheinbaum, managed to negotiate a face saver.
In return for reinforcing the southern border with 10,000 Mexican National Guard troops to halt US-bound migration and fentanyl smuggling, she has secured an agreement from Trump that he will stop US firearms flowing south.
This has made a mockery of Mexico’s own strict gun laws by turning her country’s drug cartels into private armies.
As the world’s second largest economy, China can afford to be bullish, with tariffs of its own and denying America rare metals such as tungsten crucial for the US aerospace industry and tellurium used in solar panels.
Donald Trump signed three executive orders green-lighting trade tariffs against China, Mexico and CanadaREUTERSTrump could also find he is playing into China’s hands. Since the president last imposed tariffs in 2018, China has increased its trade with Africa, South-East Asia and South America and with global trade comes global power which America should find scary.
China has gone to the World Trade Organisation squealing about discrimination and accused Trump of telling porkies, but as WTO judges are not functioning at the moment those complaints are not likely to get anywhere.
The EU is next in the president’s sights and even if the UK avoids being trumped with tariffs ourselves we are unlikely to escape unscathed.
Interest rates would rise and currencies fall among our trading partners making British exports more expensive. China may dump its cheap, excess steel on Britain which would be bad news for domestic producers.
And as this economic circus plays out Keir Starmer must walk a tightrope between America and Europe. The one position he does not want to be forced into is taking sides.
If the PM can pull that off given the UK is now a truly independent nation it would be the one Brexit dividend no one ever expected.
There is much to commend close relations with the EU. Good figures in the last quarter of 2024 mean we now do 52 per cent of our trade with it worth more than £800billion.
By comparison our import/export business with America is worth £300billion -18 per cent of our total international trade. Considerably less, but not to be sniffed at.
This is more than just a case of wanting to have our cake and eat it, but having our New York cheesecake and our Italian tiramisu and wolfing down both.
And the sensible order in which these puddings should be lined up for consumption is Europe first and America next.
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In recent months, Trump has threatened to start a trade war with the EUREUTERSStarmer is not planning to join the single market (which would mean accepting free movement) nor the EU customs union (which would mean no US trade deal) but he is going to have to give something in return.
And he should drop his opposition to that youth mobility scheme Europeans are so keen on. It really isn’t some backdoor to free movement that paranoid Brexiteers fear.
It would benefit both the UK and the EU by allowing 18 - 30 year olds to live and work in each other’s countries for a couple of years. And then go home.
We happily operate such schemes, not only with Commonwealth countries Australia, Canada and New Zealand, but also with Iceland, India, Japan, Monaco, San Marino, South Korea, Taiwan, Uruguay, and Andorra.
Why then should there be an objection in adding EU countries to the list? Or, indeed, even America?
Not even President Trump could kick up a fuss about that. As long as everyone is nice to him.
