There's no benefit in playing chicken with Trump on trade

This week Rachel Reeves will use her Mansion House speech in the City of London to "promote free and open trade between nations".

- SEAN O'GRADY

The word is that the chancellor is “expected to be clear that she will take the fight to Washington in defence of free trade”.

With Donald Trump having just seen one female progressive politician off so recently, Reeves is displaying considerable pluck in squaring up to the nascent Maga administration. Perhaps, some such as Kemi Badenoch argue, Reeves should instead take the opportunity to seize the most valuable of Brexit opportunities, and press president-elect Trump for the free trade deal with the United States we’ve been yearning for ever since that fateful referendum eight and a half years ago.

The question is: would Donald Trump ever give us a deal that would be of any benefit to the UK anyway? There are strong reasons to suppose he would not, with the worst-case scenario being that he’d force one on Britain that would actually leave us far worse off.

As with so much that will unfold during Trump 2.0, we’ve got the experience of Trump 1.0 to go on: a chaotic rehearsal for what will be a more organised and determined sequel. Answering the increasingly desperate pleas of Theresa May and Boris Johnson after the EU referendum, the Americans agreed to talks.

By 2019, the outlines of a deal were actually becoming clearer. Indeed, a draft text of such an agreement was leaked, and it ended up being used by the then Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in one of his few successful assaults on the Tories in that year’s general election. “Our NHS is not for sale”, cried Jezza, and for once he had something to back up the fearmongering.