United States Tariffs: Steel and Aluminium

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fairhead]

I thank my noble friend for his supportive words. Although officially I am not in the Trade Policy Unit—I am concentrating on exports—I obviously have interactions with it. It is likely that I will visit the US in a few weeks’ time and I will continue to represent the importance for us of addressing the excess steel capacity in the world, which is the root cause of the problem. We have made good progress along those lines. Where we see other countries behaving improperly, we are able to initiate anti-dumping or anti-subsidy measures. In the UK alone there are 45, which have proved to be effective. We will continue to fight but it is important that we do so within a rules-based system.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on her appointment, and we wish her well in her trade export work. We commiserate with her, however, for having to repeat that Statement from the Secretary of State for International Trade, which was a catalogue of name calling and impotence. If he had the influence he claims with his great long list of American friends, whom he will be lobbying over the next week or two, we would not have had these tariffs in the first place.

I have two questions. First, is the Minister in any way optimistic that President Trump will lift the tariff he has announced? Secondly, does the Minister not think that this situation gives the complete lie to the argument for leaving the European Union on the basis that Britain’s global trade will somehow compensate for the loss of trade with the European Union that we will suffer? In addition, does the Minister not agree that the Prime Minister’s choice of words in her Mansion House speech—she said that it is now an object of policy on the part of Her Majesty’s Government that we will have less market access to the European Union—looks ever more unwise with each tweet and utterance from President Trump?

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[Baroness Fairhead]

I agree with my noble friend Lord Lawson that when we are an independent trading nation, we will be able very directly to use the relationship we have with a key ally. That said, given that we believe so strongly in global free trade within an international rules-based system, and given that we are part of the EU and have a duty to co-operate, we will use our special and deep relationship with the US to help the EU overall in progressing this with the US by trying to ensure that we have the best possible chance of eliminating the tariff or getting significant exemptions.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that it is a complete fantasy if the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, thinks that we will be in a stronger position to negotiate with the United States when we do not have the weight of Europe behind us and we are acting entirely independently? Further, does she not think that that is a controlled experiment which can only do enormous harm to the country and that we would be better off not engaging in it in the first place?

[Baroness Fairhead]

We should be happy that we have a long, enduring and strong relationship with a very important partner and all our efforts should be concentrated on addressing where we do disagree, because where that is the case we will say so, and in this case we have done so. Equally, however, the numbers I have seen on our trade with the US show that we have $1 trillion-worth of mutual investment in each other’s economies. We should be taking that forward and using it to make sure that global trade really prospers around the world.