Latest US elections: Harris is set to give her first speech after Trump’s election victory

TO Beth Rigbypolitical editor

Scenarios range from full-blown trade wars to softer protectionist measures, which the UK has already come to terms with under the Biden administration.

“It’s hard to say what this will mean for us now,” a senior government official told me. “There will be trade consequences, but it is unclear whether they will be flat tariffs that trigger the trade war with China that we are all feeling the pain from, or the mildly protectionist measures that the US has been doing for years.

“In a nightmare trade scenario of huge tariffs… if this happens, Brexit will look like a paper cutout.”

For the UK, located outside the EU and dealing with China and the US, tariffs could be particularly acute and cause difficulties at home.

As a major trading country, tariffs will have a large inflationary impact on goods.

“This will have a big impact on how we have to confront China and Europe and will lead to retaliatory trade wars,” said one person familiar with the scenario planning.

“It forces us to choose. Are we facing more America or China?

“We are exposed as a trading nation because there are relatively few of us between the EU, China and US bloc. So we’ll suffer disproportionately, and we don’t have any great friends to make friends with, so we’ll be squeezed.” “

It’s also unclear how fixed tariffs relate to the vaunted post-Brexit trade deal that Trump was once interested in but President Joe Biden was not.

It is currently unclear to the Labor government how the issue can be revisited, or whether it wants to, in light of both Trump’s protectionism and Labour’s red lines on opening up the NHS to private pharmaceutical companies or agriculture to the import of genetically modified products.

The prospect of punitive tariffs that would force the UK to the negotiating table is the exact opposite of what the government wants.

However, can there be some kind of golden mean?

One government official argues that there may be opportunities for security or technology cooperation other than a full-fledged trade deal.

There is some hope that dealmaker Trump might be open to such connections.