Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones said the era of globalisation has “ended” following Donald Trump’s new tariffs.
It comes after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer suggested in a Sunday Telegraph article he was about to announce state intervention to protect UK firms from the US president’s move. The UK was among nations hit with a 10% “baseline” import duty, and negotiations on a trade deal to reduce tariffs are continuing.
“Globalisation as we’ve known it for the last couple of decades has come to an end,” Jones added, in a BBC interview.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch disagreed that globalisation was over and pointed to “great” trading relationships with other countries.
There are fears of a global recession following President Trump’s “Liberation Day”, when he announced sweeping import taxes, sparking retaliatory action from countries including China and Canada.
The prime minister has said the government “will do everything necessary to protect Britain’s national interest” and is “ready to use industrial policy” to help shelter businesses, because “the world as we know it has gone”.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show, Jones was asked whether globalisation – which has resulted in a boom in imports of cheap fashion, electrical goods and other products – was over.
“Yeah it’s ended, the prime minister said that himself this morning,” he said.
The change meant the UK had to “build out” relationships with allies around the world but also invest in the UK’s own economy, Jones said, denying ministers were “scrabbling” for solutions.
He insisted the government was “trying to get ahead of these challenges” , which he said were “why we have to invest in the domestic economy, both for UK businesses, but also our public services… which is why our plan for change is investing in the NHS and skills as well as industrial policy.”
Amid reports both elements of the spending review and the industrial strategy could now be brought forward from their expected June publication date, he said Labour had been working on the industrial strategy since it was in opposition.
Pressed on whether they would be brought forward, Jones deferred to Sir Keir’s announcement expected in the coming days and laughed when Laura Kuenssberg said “that sounds almost like a yes but you’re not allowed to say it to us this morning”.
The UK government is continuing its policy of not responding with counter-tariffs, as other countries have done, preferring a “calm” approach focused on a UK-US trade deal.
“We’re hoping to do a deal,” Jones said, adding on tariffs that “we have a better outcome than other comparable countries as a consequence of our diplomacy”.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch agreed that retaliatory tariffs were not a solution because they would only harm UK consumers.
However, she told Laura Kuenssberg she did not agree globalisation was over, insisting what was happening was only “fragmentation” and that “we still have a great trading relationship with many other countries”.
Badenoch added the Labour government should pick up the deal former Prime Minister Boris Johnson had tried to negotiate with Trump during his previous presidency, which ended in 2020.
Ms Kuenssberg asked whether the deal was “oven-ready”, as she had claimed several times, and Badenoch suggested the government “should “pick up where we left off”, following former president Joe Biden’s decision to dump the deal.
“We had six rounds of negotiations where there were some decisions that were concluded and they can pick that up and take it,” she said.
“The most important thing is removing tariffs – the tariffs are going to be disruptive for our businesses…
“That is going to make a whole mess of the tax take that [chancellor] Rachel Reeves thought she was going to be getting in her budget.
“We are in a worse place now because of the decisions that Labour has made and people out there are suffering.”
