Getting into business with China posed great danger for Britain, U.S. President Donald Trump said as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer embarked on the second day of a visit to China, the first by a British leader since 2018, aimed at re-setting relations and boosting trade. Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI | License Photo
U.S. President Donald Trump warned Britain and Canada that their efforts to forge closer trade and diplomatic ties with China were fraught with risks, especially so for Canada.
Responding to a question about Britain “getting into business with China,” Trump said it was “very dangerous for them to do that and I think it’s even more dangerous for Canada,” saying China wasn’t the answer to its economic problems.
Trump said it would be a “big hurdle for Canada to get over.”
His comments came as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Shanghai on Friday at the head of a high-level, 60-strong, U.K. diplomatic and business delegation on day two of a three-day visit to China and two weeks after a similar visit by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
On Thursday, Starmer met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, the first such summit after a lengthy period of frosty relations between the two countries, striking deals on tariffs, allowing Britons to travel to China for leisure or business purposes visa-free and boosting access to each other’s markets.
Downing Street responded by saying that the Trump administration was briefed in advance about the trip and its goals and noted that Trump was scheduled to make the trip himself in April.
Starmer said Friday that his meeting with Xi had been “very good,” yielding “just the level of engagement that we hoped for.”
Xi said it was imperative that China and Britain build a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship amid “the current turbulent and ever-changing international situation.”
On his trip in the middle of this month, Carney announced a “strategic partnership” with China, including a new trade deal, ending an almost decade-long deep freeze in relations between the two countries.
That prompted Trump on Saturday to threaten to impose 100% tariffs on Canadian goods entering the United States if the trade deal went ahead, saying he would not allow Chinese goods intended for the U.S. market to circumvent U.S. tariffs by routing through Canada.
The British and Canadian visits follow a flurry of heads of government beating a path to Beijing’s door over the past two months, including France, Ireland, South Korea and Finland, as countries scramble to get back-up plans in place in the face of increasingly unpredictable trading relations with the United States.
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Picketers hold signs outside at the entrance to Mount Sinai Hospital on Monday in New York City. Nearly 15,000 nurses across New York City are now on strike after no agreement was reached ahead of the deadline for contract negotiations. It is the largest nurses’ strike in NYC’s history. The hospital locations impacted by the strike include Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai West, Montefiore Hospital and New York Presbyterian Hospital. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
