WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump warned Britain against getting into business with Beijing as Prime Minister Keir Starmer lauded the economic benefits of resetting relations with China during a visit there on Friday.
As Western leaders reel from Trump’s unpredictability, Starmer is the latest to head to China.
In three-hour talks with President Xi Jinping on Thursday, the British leader called for a “more sophisticated relationship” with improved market access, lower tariffs and investment deals while also discussing soccer and Shakespeare.
In Washington, however, replying to questions about the closer ties, Trump said, “Well, it’s very dangerous for them to do that.” He was speaking to reporters ahead of the premiere of the “Melania” film at the Kennedy Centre.
He did not elaborate.
Trump, who plans to travel to China in April, threatened last week to impose tariffs on Canada after Prime Minister Mark Carney struck economic deals with Beijing on a recent visit.
A Downing Street spokesperson and China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Around the time of Trump’s comments, Starmer told a meeting of the UK-China Business Forum in the Chinese capital that his “very warm” meetings with Xi had provided “just the level of engagement that we hoped for”.
He added, “We warmly engaged and made some real progress, actually, because the UK has got a huge amount to offer.”
Starmer hailed deals on visa-free travel and lower whisky tariffs as “really important access, symbolic of what we’re doing with the relationship”.
“That is the way that we build the mutual trust and respect that is so important,” Starmer said.
Starmer, whose centre-left Labour government has struggled to deliver the economic growth it promised, has made improving relations with the world’s second-largest economy a priority.
His visit to China comes amid Trump’s on-off threats of trade tariffs and pledges to grab control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, which have rattled long-standing US allies, Britain among them.
Because of his country’s long history of working closely with the United States, Britain could continue to strengthen economic ties with China without angering Trump, Starmer told reporters on the aeroplane en route to China.
“The relationship we have with the United States is one of the closest … we hold,” he said, enumerating areas such as defence, security, intelligence and trade.
Starmer said Britain would not have to choose between closer ties with the United States or China, highlighting Trump’s September visit to Britain that unveiled 150 billion pounds of US investment in the country.
Starmer, who normally avoids criticising Trump, has been much more willing to defy the US president in recent weeks.
He urged Trump to apologise for his “frankly appalling” remarks last week that some NATO troops avoided frontline combat and said he would not yield to his demands to annex Greenland.
In addition to Carney, French President Emmanuel Macron visited China in December, when Xi accompanied him on a rare trip outside the capital. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is expected to travel to China soon.
Before Trump’s Thursday comments on the closer ties, his Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said it was unlikely that Starmer’s efforts with China would pay off.
“The Chinese are the greatest exporters, and they are very, very difficult when you’re trying to export to them,” he told reporters. “So good luck if the British are trying to export to China…it’s just unlikely.”
Asked if Trump would threaten Britain with tariffs as he did Canada, Lutnick said, “I think Canada played things a little differently.
“They said there are two powers of the world, and we’re going to select which one we want to trade with, and things like that.
“Unless the prime minister of Britain sort of takes on the United States and says very difficult things, I doubt it,” Lutnick added.
