British finance minister Rachel Reeves said on Wednesday she would make “strong representations” over the importance of free trade to the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump who has proposed imposing tariffs on all U.S. imports.
“We are not just a passive actor in this,” Reeves told the Treasury Committee in the lower house of Britain’s parliament.
“It’s a trade relationship with the United States and we will make strong representations about the importance of free and open trade, not just between ourselves and the United States but globally.”
Trump has proposed a 10% universal tariff on imports from all foreign countries and has said there would be additional tariffs on imports from China.
Earlier on Wednesday, analysts at Goldman Sachs cut their British economic growth forecast for 2025 to 1.4% from 1.6%, citing potential higher U.S. tariffs and other financial risks to countries in Europe after Trump’s re-election.
Separately, a leading British think tank said the country’s already slow economic growth rate could be more than halved next year if Trump imposed his import tariff proposals.
Reeves said it was too early to consider changes to official forecasts in the light of the election result and she held out the hope that the threat of tariffs might not materialise.
“President Trump has been president of the United States before and we continue to have a strong and healthy economic relationship, and we as a government will continue to make the case for free trade,” she told lawmakers.
“I’m confident that those trade flows will continue under the new president,” she said, adding the British government would raise trade issues in the conversations it was due to have with the next U.S. administration.
“We will prepare for different eventualities. I absolutely do not want to sound in any way sanguine,” she said. “But on the other hand I am optimistic about our ability to shape the global economic agenda as we have under successive governments.”
