UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to India continues today, with cooperation on higher education and military training among the announcements. There’s also been suggestions that the UK could retaliate against new EU steel tariffs.
Starmer meets Modi
UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer continued his visit to India today with a meeting with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi.
Speaking in Mumbai, Modi said as part of remarks reported by the Independent that the “India-UK partnership is becoming [a] crucial foundation for global stability and economic progress”, as both prime ministers vaunted the benefits of the recently-agreed trade deal between their nations.
The trip has also yielded an announcement on military training cooperation and the development of nine new Indian campuses for UK universities.
Starmer said the trip meant a “doubling down on the potential of the trade deal”, and he has brought a delegation of over 100 business and higher education representatives to explore how the partnership can help both countries drive growth.
“We are creating a new modern partnership focusing on the future,” he added.
The Guardian reports that Starmer and his team has been meeting with non-executive chair of Indian tech giant Infosys to discuss the company’s rollout of a digital ID programme, something the government plans to introduce in the UK. The prime minister has ruled out the company’s participation in the UK scheme, however.
Steel retaliation
The UK could retaliate against the EU’s newly proposed 50% tariff on imports of steel, according to Department for Business and Trade director general for trade relations, Kate Joseph.
She said at the Trade Remedies Authority’s (TRA) annual summit that it is “clear that we will do what we need to do in order to defend the steel industry”.
“We have a number of different options available to us, and at this point, we’re not making any decisions about how we would use them, but all of this remains possible.”
We reported yesterday on the EU’s decision, which industry body UK Steel has called “perhaps the biggest crisis” the UK sector has ever faced.
Conservative EU scepticism
The shadow trade secretary, Andrew Griffith, has told Politico that there could be “unintended consequences” should the UK opt to align its regulations more closely with the EU.
The Labour government is currently pursuing a ‘reset’ of relations with Brussels that includes a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement to ease the movement of food between the UK and EU. There are also plans to tie both regions’ emissions trading schemes and carbon border taxes, something about which Griffith voiced particular disquiet.
The plans on green regulation “may impede that very ability to get concessions from India that might unlock big opportunities for financial and professional services”, he said, adding that “you’ve got to be very careful about understanding what are the unintended consequences”.
A Politico-commissioned poll has suggested that two thirds of Brits support a new SPS agreement with the EU, though when this was put to Griffith he suggested that “we’re all in favour when it’s couched in terms of a poll as: ‘wouldn’t it be good to remove this particular friction and have these particular rules?’”.
“But then, the flip side of that is not surfaced in that opening is that it may, in future, prevent you from exploiting other opportunities.”
TRA conference
Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade Customs Practice director Anna Doherty was in attendance yesterday at the TRA annual conference, and has set out a few of her thoughts in the latest edition of Customs Corner, which you can read elsewhere in today’s Daily Update.
“Unsurprisingly,” she told us, “questions are already emerging on the UK response to the EU steel measures announced this week”, as well as on the question of a “wider steel strategy” and the approach to existing safeguards for the UK industry that are set to expire. “And that’s just one sector.”
“At a time when the international trade landscape continues to move at pace, with higher tariffs leading to more overcapacity in various industries and trade diversions, trade defence measures will become increasingly important.”
Also in the news
· US president Donald Trump has signalled Hamas and Israel’s agreement to “the first phase” of a peace plan, with the help of “mediators from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey”
· China is tightening export controls on rare earth processing technologies ahead of a meeting between Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping
Yesterday in trade
· The EU confirmed its decision to double steel tariffs to 50%, matching those currently set by the US
· Starmer said that offering more visa routes for Indian workers looking to move to the UK “isn’t part of the plan”
· Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch pledged a new ‘golden rule’ aimed at cutting the government budget deficit by ensuring half of all savings on spending would be used to reduce it
You can read those stories, and more, here.
