Britain SLAPPED with fresh tariffs as Donald Trump ESCALATES trade war | REACTION

I think that's what you call a varied menu tonight, ladies and gentlemen, on this Thursday night. It's nearly the weekend, so let's get stuck in keeping the ship afloat tonight. Former political adviser Thomas Corbett-Dillon and Republican commentator Matthew Hurt are with me. And in London, hopefully waving, not drowning, our Labour commentator Simon Nash and former Conservative MP Louise Mensch. Hi, folks. Thank you all for keeping me company for the next three hours. I can't do it without you. So, moving on to our main story, some breaking news, which has just entered, in fact, the GB newsroom. Donald Trump's government has announced a new swathe of tariffs on 60 countries, including the UK, after time-limited levies introduced by the President following a Supreme Court defeat expire tomorrow. The US will impose tariffs of 10%, 12.5% on imports, accusing countries of failing to adequately enforce bans on goods produced using forced labour. The UK will face a 10% import tariff on goods. So, let me get a quick word from my panel on this. Matthew Hurt, President Trump says that one of his favourite words is tariff. It's literally one of my least favourite words, because the mental gymnastics I have to do about tariffs as to who it's going to cost more money to are literally giving me a headache. Right. What is this going to mean for us? I'm glad we're all nodding along. I really have to draw my GCSE maths here. Matthew, what's he doing, President Trump? Well, look, Bev, I, as a Conservative, I oppose tariffs because tariffs are levied on the individual, on the consumer. This only hurts the economies of not only the United States, but of our trading partners. I have not been behind tariffs since President Trump launched the first wave in the beginning of this administration here, and I'm concerned and confused by this. It is a great negotiating tactic, I think, but it falls flat when it is in practice. It's just harmful to our allies. But also, he was told by the Supreme Court that he couldn't impose these tariffs and he had to give the money back. So, how come he's still pushing on with it, Louise? Look, I don't know. I mean, I too am a Conservative, and when I was growing up, Conservatives believed in free trade, you know, Adam Smith, the wealth of nations. I think he's just a very determined guy. He doesn't like to be contradicted by anybody, even the Supreme Court. There will be lawsuits, and I would just ask him to drop the tariffs. And if he won't drop it on everybody, drop it on us. At least we are now turned over a new leaf and letting him use the bases, which we should have done in the first place. But we are your close ally. Please don't punish us, Mr President. Using the internet without a VPN, a virtual private network, is a bit like taking to the road without car insurance. All it takes is one unlucky moment to cost you a lot of cash. 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But PIA can protect your ability to consume the news and content you love. Private Internet Access is available for Windows users, macOS, Android, Linux, iOS, and you can use one PIA subscription to protect an unlimited amount of devices. And we've got a huge GB News discount for you too. Click the link in this video's description and you'll get a massive 83% off PIA. That's under £2 a month, the price of a coffee, and you'll get an extra four months completely free on top. Also, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee too. Visit piavpn.com forward slash gbnews to start protecting yourself digitally today. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Because, sorry, Simon, let me just, let me just come to Thomas here in the studio here in America, because what President Trump does with tariffs is he uses them as a negotiation tactic, doesn't he? It's not really about the revenue. It's about a deal make, a deal to be made, sorry. And particularly actually when it came to the, if you remember, the conflict that was rising up between India and Pakistan, when he said to them, you keep fighting. I'm going to make this very expensive for you. And it worked and they backed down. But he doesn't have that beef with us. So what, why do you think, Thomas? Well, that's one of my biggest complaints about the embassy here is that I think we are missing out on a huge opportunity. This is the most pro-British president we've ever had in history. His mother is from Scotland and this embassy in the, in the US here, the British embassy refused to engage properly with the administration because unfortunately it's full of lefties. The whole embassy is full of left-wing people, mostly Democrats, a lot of American staff there. And they refuse to engage because they think, well, when a Democrat comes in, you know, on the first term of the president, they thought, well, we'll wait until the next president comes in and we'll, we'll work better with him. Joe Biden came in and couldn't care less about the British. So I think we're missing out on an opportunity here. We could easily have had this situation resolved and said, you know, keep us out of this, Mr. President, if we had a better relationship, if Ed Miliband hadn't gone out there and called him a racist and all these horrible things, we'd probably have a better situation now. But unfortunately they've made the same mistake over and over again. We're not engaging with him. So are you saying that ambassador Sir Christian Turner, who let's remember, this could have been Lord Mandelson we're talking about here. Are you accusing Sir Turner of not handling this relationship in a way that is beneficial to the UK? Definitely. I mean, first of all, this is an ambassador that's just arrived. We've had turn over, turn over since we've had Peter Mandelson and then we were running through at Karen Pierce and all of these people, they did not engage with the administration in the right way. I know the embassy here, there was about one Republican working there. I knew him well, that was it. The rest of them were all these lefties that refused to engage with the president. They have not played the game. Remember with the president, this is a game. He is playing a game, a great example of how the British could have used this. When we had that terrorist that we were trying to deport to Pakistan, we then gave them $150 million. The president would have said, you're not getting that money if you don't take this terrorist. But the British refused to play the global game. We still, we're still in the past. We think, oh, let's be nice to everyone. The world has changed and we need to start being stronger. Now the briefings that I've been at the embassy here, the messaging is very much, we are working well behind the scenes. The embassy here with the administration of President Trump, despite what was happening publicly with Zakir Starmer and the president, everything is running very, very smoothly behind the scenes. But Simon, I wonder if these tariffs suggest that it isn't quite as plain sailing as it's being sold to us. Well, I think these tariff rates do have to be approved by Congress and President Trump sort of did an executive order in order to reduce those tariffs. Now I would say, you know, to hark back to the days of Mandelson in the embassy, I mean, it wasn't like a far left embassy. They did get us reduced tariffs. My own company exported stuff to the U.S. and benefited from those reduced tariffs. So, I mean, the problem is using executive orders to set the tariff rates isn't really how American democracy works. And Congress or the Senate have insisted that it goes through them. But I mean, a 10% rate isn't absolutely huge. There are tariffs of 50% on some products to some countries. And to America, there were tariffs of 25% on some, for example, where we make bike cleaning products amongst other things. And it was a 25% tariff dependent on the ingredients. So, you know, it's not the end of the world. I do think that Trump could secretly be a social warrior activist, actually. The issue of Chinese slavery, the Uyghur slaves being forced into labor camps to make cheap goods, which are then exported to the USA. Well, not anymore, but to Europe. And Europe's not stopping those imports. And that's to do with, it's causing slavery. So, you know, maybe he's genuinely caring about that issue. And a lot of people in America do. A lot of people in Europe do. We don't want slavery. We don't want people to be forced into labor camps. So he's got a point, actually. That may be an unexpected consequence, perhaps. But what a challenge to Andy Burnham, though. OK, let's see how you can do and get those tariffs taken down, Prime Minister. Here you go. That's first in your inbox.