Lammy Vows Trump-Style Dealmaking in UK Foreign Secretary Role

(Bloomberg) -- David Lammy said he wants to emulate Donald Trump’s ability to strike a deal as the UK foreign secretary tries to reset relations with the European Union, the latest example of warm words directed at the president-elect despite the threat of US tariffs hanging over British trade policy.

Most Read from Bloomberg

“We can take at least one lesson from Donald Trump, and that is the art of the deal,” Lammy told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday, referring to the president-elect’s book. “Given that growth is such a central challenge for our country, judge me by the deals that I’m able to secure.”

Lammy said deals are emerging with the EU and Germany on defense and security, as well as partnership initiatives with India, Nigeria and South Africa.

Keir Starmer’s UK administration is trying to establish good ties with Trump, despite clear policy differences in areas like climate change and over military support for Ukraine. The prime minister and Lammy, whose past criticism of Trump has come under intense scrutiny since the US election, had dinner with the president-elect at his private residence in New York in September.

But Starmer’s Labour government also wants to forge closer trade ties with the EU, which potentially limits the scope for the UK to seek greater access to American markets due to incompatibility in areas including food safety standards. Lammy also recently visited China in an attempt to thaw trade relations relations, a strategy that likewise could be complicated by Trump’s efforts to target the Asian nation with an aggressive tariff regime.

Still, Lammy sounded optimistic in front of the lawmakers. He played down expectations that Trump will significantly row-back President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a package of clean-energy subsidies and tax breaks, due to the jobs-benefit that states which voted Republican have seen.

Lammy told the committee that his contacts in Washington have told him “the wholesale rolling back of the agenda that we’ve seen from the US in the last five years was unlikely.” But he warned that Trump’s tone on climate change will differ from Biden’s administration.

During the wide-ranging session in Parliament, Lammy also warned that the UK was losing its soft power dominance due to the sale of British embassies by previous administrations and cuts to the BBC’s international service, which he said allowed Russia and other hostile states to fill an information vacuum.

Lammy told the committee that the UK’s embassy estate in China isn’t “fit for purpose” and said he agrees that repeated cuts to the overseas aid budget gave the impression that the UK is an unreliable partner.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.