President-elect Donald Trump‘s senior economic aide Stephen Moore, speaking from Mar-a-Lago, said that the United States would be “less interested” in a free trade deal with the United Kingdom if it pursued closer ties with the “socialist model” of the European Union.
Moore, a former member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and chief economist at The Heritage Foundation, said (as quoted in The Times): “I’ve always said that Britain has to decide — do you want to go towards the European socialist model or do you want to go towards the US free market? Lately it seems like they are shifting more in a European model and so if that’s the case I think we’d be less interested in having [a free trade deal] … I hope they would move towards freedom but that doesn’t seem to be the case given the budget that they just came out with in London.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer — who has been negotiating a closer trading relationship with the EU — vowed during a recent foreign policy speech to make his stance very clear “against the backdrop of these dangerous times.”
Starmer said of an ultimatum like Moore’s: “The idea that we must choose between our allies, that somehow we’re with either America or Europe, is plain wrong.” He added, “I reject it, utterly.”
JUST IN: In a major foreign policy speech, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer warns Donald Trump that he will not side with the United States over the EU after Trump allies suggested he must make a choice between the two. pic.twitter.com/44pbv3U7UA
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) December 3, 2024
Note: Starmer has the support of Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, who has urged the government to rebuild trade relations with the EU.
Starmer noted that past UK Prime Ministers Clement Attlee (1945-1951) and Winston Churchill (1940-1945, 1951-1955) did not choose between allies. Starmer said: “National interest requires that we work with both.”
