A newly appointed business minister has said Donald Trump’s approach to trade is “total nonsense”.
Lord Callanan, who was handed a job in the department by Boris Johnson in the reshuffle last week, also warned Conservatives they should not simply support the US president because he upsets “all the right people”.
Speaking at the Adam Smith Institute on Tuesday evening, Sky News reported Callanan said of Trump: “I hate his protectionist agenda.”
Callanan used his speech to warn the UK post-Brexit had to be a “badly needed” advocate of free trade.
“You’ve got people like Trump,” he said. ”I’m very ambivalent about Trump. On the one hand, a lot of the stuff he says is total nonsense – I hate his protectionist agenda.
“But he does have the great virtue of upsetting all the right people.
“And we must be careful not to support him just because he upsets [London mayor] Sadiq Khan and [Guardian columnist] Owen Jones [...] tempting though that is.”
Callanan said free traders had to “make neoliberalism popular again” – a reference to Trump’s “make America great again” slogan.
Trump has brought in a series of trade tariffs, including on goods from the EU and China.
The British government is hopeful it can sign a trade deal with the US in order to show it can forge new economic ties post-Brexit.
In January, US trade secretary Steve Mnuchin told said he was “optimistic” a trade agreement could be reached this year.
During the general election, Jeremy Corbyn repeatedly warned a UK-US trade deal signed with Trump in the White House would open up the NHS to American private companies – something the Conservatives denied.
