Lord Hannay of Chiswick
Main Page: Lord Hannay of Chiswick (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Hannay of Chiswick's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
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Lord Stockwood (Lab)
The noble Lord raises a number of challenging and fast-moving issues, and I will try to respond as fully as I can. It is worth stating that the UK secured that preferential deal last year, driven by the Prime Minister’s direct engagement with President Trump. That was trying to give British businesses certainty and competitive advantages. The ruling at the weekend does not affect our preferential treatment in the key sectors such as pharma, cars and steel that the noble Lord mentioned.
The Business Secretary spoke to US trade representative Jamieson Greer this weekend, making clear our concerns about uncertainty and our degree of confidence in the honouring of those agreements that we needed, and he had those reassurances. UK officials across Whitehall and Washington are engaging intensively with the US as we speak, and those discussions will continue all of this week, at which time we can update the House. It is worth stating that we have always had a cool-headed and pragmatic approach to trade deals, and while I would not comment on other Governments’ policies, we do have a competitive advantage globally in the sectors we set out in the original negotiation. The biggest beneficiaries of this weekend’s announcements are those trade barriers coming down for other countries, but we still have the best deal globally, and we continue to negotiate to retain that preferential position.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, would the Minister say whether the Government’s information leads them to suppose that the President’s choice of 15% and its differential impact on countries was deliberate or inadvertent?
Lord Stockwood (Lab)
As a Minister only six months into the job, I have uncertainty in my own mind sometimes; I am certainly not going to comment on the US President. What I can say is that we remain the only country that has secured a 10% tariff on auto, securing hundreds of thousands of jobs; we are the only country in the world with a 0% tariff on pharmaceuticals; and we are the only country in the world to benefit from a 25% tariff on steel, aluminium and other derivatives. We believe that we will retain those competitive positions, but our position is to control the controllables that we have today and negotiate to retain those benefits for UK businesses.