Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been urged to "wake up and smell the coffee" after suggesting that the UK's trade relationship with the European Union is "arguably even more important" than ties with the United States.Sparking controversy ahead of her meeting with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the Chancellor had travelled to Washington for talks aimed at securing a trade deal, to mitigate the impact of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump earlier this month.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00What about Rachel Reeves? What do you make of her? She's currently, she's in Washington.
00:04She was talking to, what was his name? Scott Besant, trying to work out a trade deal and discuss all of that.
00:12However, she went in there and pretty much told them that Europe are a bit better than them in terms of trade.
00:18So this is where Chris and I might end up in a good head-to-head,
00:22because what Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer haven't appreciated is that the European Union approach to governance and the economy,
00:32particularly if you're talking about a trade deal, is diametrically opposed to what the U.S. is now doing.
00:38The U.S. is ditching the European model. Biden and the Western civilization, Western countries generally had adopted the European model.
00:46But he's going for a completely new model, ditching DEI, enforcing borders, deregulating, ditching net zero.
00:54A model which actually over time, irrespective of what the markets might be doing at the moment,
00:59over time will strengthen the U.S. economy.
01:02The U.S. economy is bound to do better over time as a result of the policies being instituted by Donald Trump.
01:08And Keir Starmer needs to recognize that if he doesn't adopt the same basic approach,
01:13businesses will leave the U.K. and go to the U.S.
01:17People will leave the U.K. and go to the U.S., Dubai, and lots of people are going to Dubai already and other places.
01:22So what we've got to do is wake up and smell the coffee and start doing some of the things that Trump's doing if we want a strong British economy,
01:31particularly if we want a trade deal with the U.S.
01:34Well, exactly, which is somewhat – it was – surely even you can see that it was somewhat unwise for Rachel Rees to say what she did
01:40before a discussion with Scott Besson, who's obviously dealing with the trade negotiations.
01:45I think what Rachel Rees has got on front and centre of her mind is for Britain to get a trade agreement with the U.S.
01:50And when we look at that, that is – we're one of the biggest trading partners, and I think that we can get bilateral agreement on that
01:56because there's such – that special relationship when it comes to defence, when it comes to all of these sort of counter-terrorism,
02:03particularly when it comes to Europe and military bases, as we've seen with Chagos.
02:07So I'm confident that Britain will get a good trade deal there.
02:11We know that there's been sort of steel tariffs in between all of that.
02:14But on the whole, I think Britain's been taking the right approach with the Trump administration and wanting to play ball.
02:19We've got to be mindful that the reason why Trump's doing what he's doing is China is exporting unemployment
02:25through suppressing wages in their own economy to sell those cheap goods.
02:28And there's places like Vietnam, Japan and other places around that that we can engage with as well.
02:34And we still need to be mindful of our EU trading partners because they are the closest.
02:37But Rachel Rees kind of pitched it that trade-wise, the EU was more important to the U.K. than America.
02:43And that's unwise before a meeting with the trade secretary in the U.S.
02:47And also, it's not necessarily true.
02:48For now, maybe, but there's still time.
02:51Listen.