By Tom Fowdy
Several weeks ago in an article titled: "When faced with US Pressure, Britain does what it knows best, capitulate," I noted that "it is no coincidence after all that the UK is now suddenly concerned about "forced labour" in Chinese solar panels again, or readying to ban duty free imports on small packages from Alibaba, Temu and Shein." These moves, which I will now combine with the nationalisation of British Steel, were done quietly by the government without antagonising Beijing, but the political intent and timing of them were unmistakable.
I had analysed at the time that these announcements were overtures and appeasement towards the United States in the bid to reach a trade deal in Trump's trade war against the UK, with it having been widely documented that the administration has been seeking anti-China commitments as pre-conditions for trade deals. It was then reported in the Guardian yesterday that the UK, indeed, without specifying, had agreed to increase scrutiny of Chinese goods in the supply chain to meet US demands. China's Foreign Ministry picked up on this and subsequently condemned London.
Hence, the true reason the UK nationalised British Steel again was that a Chinese company owned it, and this would be an obvious obstacle to getting US tariffs. Although the government did not antagonise China over this, it nonetheless staged a crisis to justify re-nationalisation. Secondly, we know the UK government suddenly decided it was "concerned" about forced Labour in solar panels because the US has been waging a crusade against Chinese solar panels using human rights as a moralist pretext for market-based exclusion. The US has done this to ban them from their market, because it seeks to dominate the supply chain for itself.
This move, of course, is self-destructive for the government, undermining its net-zero policy by dramatically driving up costs. Yet, it is a very familiar playbook by the United Kingdom, I have seen it all before. The British government has a very bad and persistent habit of readily capitulating to everything the United States wants, even when it is self-defeating and imposes clear costs on the country to do so. Hence, in 2020, the Boris Johnson government decided to ban Huawei from the country's 5G network at the behest of American pressure, U-turning, and driving up network costs by billions.
As this scenario suggests, as well as the most recent one, post-Brexit Britain, be it Labour or Conservative, or Reform, is ideologically obsessed with reaching a free trade agreement with the United States at all costs, even when the terms are unreasonable and the benefits are minimal. It appears that when it comes to America, Britain has no leverage. Keir Starmer talks about resetting the relationship with the European Union, but European leaders, both national and institutional, appear to have a political vendetta amidst Brexit to deny Britain as many exclusive benefits as possible because it will vindicate the UK's departure as beneficial, and thus damage the system they have created.
Sadly, this has massively increased Britain's dependency on Washington's political influence, and any attempt to use China as an alternative option is quickly hedged out by the moment the White House exerts pressure. As I have stated numerous times, the goal of the Trump administration, as well as US strategy writ large since 2018, is to forcefully create an America-centric economic order whereby other countries are unilaterally subservient to Washington. Sadly, it would appear that British policymakers deem they have little other choice. Such anti-China strings may mean the UK may likewise block China's entry into the CPTPP economic agreement it is now part of.
At the same time, you do wonder, given all the free-trade blocks China is already a part of, how successful is it going to be that the US demands other countries impose trade restrictions on China to appease them? The UK is, of course, situated geographically between North America and Europe, far from China, and Beijing is not amongst its highest export destinations, but this isn't going to wash as easily in the Asia-Pacific, where China ranks much higher as a market than the United States. Either way, such narrow-minded appeasement only shows the desperation of an already hugely unpopular government and the desperate economic situation Britain is fighting.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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