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    Ukraine ceasefire plans moving to operational phase, Starmer says

    Keir Starmer has called for the “guns to fall silent in Ukraine” and said military powers will meet next week as plans to secure a peace deal move to an “operational phase”.The UK prime minister said Vladimir Putin’s “yes, but” approach to a proposed ceasefire was not good enough, and the Russian president would have to negotiate “sooner or later”.He accused Putin of trying to delay peace, and said it must become a reality after more than three years of war.Starmer was speaking at a press conference in Downing Street after a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, including the European Commission, European nations, Nato, Canada, Ukraine, Australia and New Zealand on Saturday morning.The meeting was addressed by Starmer, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte.Starmer told journalists: “Sooner or later Putin will have to come to the table. So this is the moment. Let the guns fall silent, let the barbaric attacks on Ukraine once and for all stop, and agree to a ceasefire now.”He added: “Now is the time to engage in discussion on a mechanism to manage and monitor a full ceasefire, and agree to serious negotiations towards not just a pause, but a lasting peace, backed by strong security arrangements through our coalition of the willing.”He said the meeting had led to “new commitments”, including on the wider defence and security of Europe.“We won’t sit back and wait for Putin to act,” he said. “Instead we will keep pushing forward, so the group I convened today is more important than ever.”He added: “We agreed we will keep increasing the pressure on Russia, keep the military aid flowing to Ukraine, and keep tightening the restrictions on Russia’s economy to weaken Putin’s war machine and bring him to the table.“And we agreed to accelerate our practical work to support a potential deal. So we will now move into an operational phase.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOf the military meeting on Thursday, he said it would lead to “strong and robust plans … to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security”.Starmer had earlier called Ukraine and Zelenskyy the “party of peace”.He said Donald Trump was “absolutely committed to the lasting peace that is needed in Ukraine, and everything he’s doing is geared towards that end”.He told journalists Europe needed to improve its own defence and security, and said the UK was talking to the US on a daily basis about the war.Kyiv has already accepted plans for an immediate 30-day ceasefire but, on Thursday, Putin set out sweeping conditions that he wanted to be met before Russia would agree. They include a guarantee that Ukraine would not rearm or mobilise during the truce.Starmer said: “Volodymyr had committed to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire, but Putin is trying to delay, saying there must be a painstaking study before a ceasefire can take place. Well the world needs action, not a study, not empty words and conditions.”On Saturday, Zelenskyy posted on X that Russian forces were building up along the eastern border of Ukraine, which could signal an attack on the Sumy region.He said: “The buildup of Russian forces indicates that Moscow intends to keep ignoring diplomacy. It is clear that Russia is prolonging the war.”The Ukrainian president said his forces were still fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, and were not facing an encirclement, despite claims by his Russian and US counterparts.Starmer said: “President Trump has offered Putin the way forward to a lasting peace. Now we must make this a reality. So this is the moment to keep driving towards the outcome that we want to see, to end the killing, a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, and lasting security for all of us.” More

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    Republican Russophilia: how Trump Putin-ised a party of cold war hawks

    In speech that ran for 100 minutes there was one moment when Donald Trump drew more applause from Democrats than Republicans. As the president told Congress last week how the US had sent billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, his political opponents clapped and unfurled a Ukrainian flag – while his own party sat in stony silence.It was a telling insight into Republicans’ transformation, in the space of a generation, from a party of cold war hawks to one of “America first” isolationists. Where Trump has led, many Republicans have obediently followed, all the way into the embrace of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – with huge implications for the global democratic order.“The reversal is dramatic and the willingness of the Republican party to go along with it continues to be breathtaking,” said Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind. “At least for a while it appeared that Republicans were still going to be supportive of Ukraine. But now that Trump has completely reversed our foreign policy there seems to be very little pushback.”Last month, Trump set up a peace process that began with the US and Russia’s top diplomats meeting in Saudi Arabia – with no seat at the table for Ukrainian officials. He branded Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a “dictator”, a term he has never applied to the authoritarian Putin.Along with Vice-President JD Vance, he berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, a spectacle that prompted the Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin to observe that Ronald Reagan, a Republican president who was an inveterate foe of Soviet aggression, “must be rolling over in his grave”. Trump suspended offensive cyber operations against Russia and paused military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine until it agreed to a 30-day ceasefire.The Oval Office shakedown shocked the world but there was strikingly little criticism from Republicans. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, sank into a couch and said nothing as the shouting raged around him. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who had previously been supportive of Zelenskyy, even suggested that the Ukrainian president should resign.Speaking at a Center for American Progress thinktank event in Washington this week, Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama administration official, said: “What you fundamentally believe matters little if you’re acting against those beliefs.“It was astonishing to see Republican leaders who on a Monday were praising Zelenskyy and by the Tuesday were removing any reference to him from their websites. It’s an extraordinary thing to see people who used to be pretty serious on this issue, like Lindsey Graham, suddenly saying the things.”Meanwhile, other Russia hawks such as the former vice-president Mike Pence, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have been sidelined. Republicans who were not shy about countering Trump’s foreign policy ideas during his first term are now standing by him – in public at least.Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank and author of Reagan: His Life and Legend, said: “Absent Trump, I don’t think you would see this reorientation of the Republican party. Even with Trump a lot of Republicans, especially on Capitol Hill, are very uneasy about it and don’t like what Trump is doing but they’re afraid to speak out.”View image in fullscreenOthers suggest that loyalty to or fear of Trump may not be the only explanation. Younger Republicans are questioning the legitimacy of institutions such as Nato and the United Nations and following far-right influencers such as Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Putin in Russia last year and claimed that Moscow was “so much nicer than any city in my country”.Critics say Trump, Carlson and the “Make America great again” movement see in Russia an idealised version of white Christian nationalism, in contrast to the “woke” values of western Europe. Putin has mocked the US embassy for flying a rainbow flag and suggested that transgenderism is “on the verge of a crime against humanity”.From this perspective, the struggle is no longer capitalism against communism but rather woke against unwoke. In various speeches Putin has railed against the west’s “obsessive emphasis on race”, “modern cancel culture” and “reverse racism”. He said of the west: “They invented five or six genders: transformers, trans – you see, I do not even understand what it is.”All are familiar talking points from the Maga playbook. Indeed, last year, on the rightwing strategist Steven Bannon’s War Room podcast, the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said: “Let’s talk about what this really is, Steve: this is a war against Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians; the Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that; they’re not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.”Bannon has made no secret of his desire to bring down the European Union and “globalist” forces. Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state under Barack Obama, draws a comparison with conservative “red” states and liberal “blue” states within the US. “Let’s make it real American tangible,” he said. “Russia is a red state and France and England and Nato – they’re blue states.”During the cold war, it was hardline anti-communism that was core to the Republican brand. Reagan branded the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” and stepped up US military spending. But when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985, relations improved.Reagan and Gorbachev held several summits that led to key arms control agreements. Reagan’s successor, George HW Bush, worked closely with Gorbachev and, later, Boris Yeltsin as the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, encouraging a transition to democracy and capitalism.View image in fullscreenEarly in Republican George W Bush’s presidency, he had a relatively positive relationship with Putin, memorably saying he had “looked into Putin’s soul” and found him trustworthy. The two cooperated on counter-terrorism following the 9/11 attacks but tensions grew over the Iraq war and US support for Georgia and Ukraine.By 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, relations had significantly deteriorated. Obama, a Democrat, initially pursued a “reset” policy with Russia, aiming to improve relations, but tensions resurfaced after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine. In response, Obama imposed sanctions on Russia and expelled diplomats.Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election on Trump’s behalf, according to a later Senate intelligence committee report, which found extensive evidence of contacts between the Trump campaign advisers and Kremlin officials and other Russians.Trump vehemently denied collusion even as his administration imposed sanctions on Russia. At a joint press conference in Helsinki in 2018, Trump sided with the Russian president over his own intelligence agencies. He has remained unwilling to criticise Putin, even after Russia invaded Ukraine and after the opposition activist Alexei Navalny died in prison.The Putin-isation of the Republican party should perhaps not be overstated. Older senators such as Mitch McConnell, who is retiring at the next election, Thom Tillis and Roger Wicker remain staunchly supportive of Ukraine.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “I push back against the idea that Republicans have become entranced with Putin because there’s not evidence for that. There is evidence that Republicans have become tired of the fight in Ukraine. These things are not the same.”However, the balance appears to be shifting as the cold war fades into memory. About 41% of Republicans view Russia as either “friendly” or an “ally”, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released earlier this month. And just 27% of Republicans agree with the statement that Trump is too close to Moscow, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey.View image in fullscreenAdam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ armed services committee, told the Guardian of the “Make American great again” movement: “They have definitely shown a sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s autocratic, ‘traditional’ values, which are very troubling if you care about the problems of bigotry and discrimination. There is growing sympathy and the wing of the Republican party that’s against that is getting weaker while the other wing is getting stronger.”He added: “They believe that they’re going to promote ‘traditional values’ and they see Putin as an ideological ally in that. I still think it is a minority within the Republican party but Trump’s the president. He’s the leader of that party and they’re adhering to him. Trump has an enormous amount of sympathy for that worldview and more and more of them are drifting in that direction.”Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, said: “The Republican party during the cold war was anti-communist and from their standpoint, once communism disappeared, their major motive for opposing Russia did as well.“The fact that Russia is a rightwing autocracy doesn’t particularly trouble them. To the extent that Putin has refashioned himself as a traditionalist culture warrior, he’s actually making an affirmative appeal to what the Republican party has become.” More

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    Donald Trump threatens 200% tariff on EU wine and champagne

    Donald Trump has threatened a 200% tariff on wine and champagne from European Union countries, in the latest threat of escalation in the global trade war started by the US president against the country’s biggest trading partners.Trump said in a post on Thursday on his Truth Social platform that the tariffs on all alcoholic products from the bloc would be retaliation for a “nasty” 50% levy on American bourbon whiskey announced by the EU.The EU’s action against bourbon whiskey – due to come into force on 1 April – was itself part of a €26bn ($28bn) response to Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, which came into effect on Wednesday.Trump claims the US’s trading partners have taken advantage of the US and that tariffs will help him to bring back jobs – a theory that is roundly rejected by most mainstream economists.The tariffs on the EU, Canada, Mexico and China – and those imposed in retaliation – threaten to tip the US economy into recession, and Trump has admitted there may be a “period of transition” while businesses start producing more in the US.The White House has so far shrugged off the concerns of investors, after his tariff announcements were greeted with heavy stock market sell-offs that have wiped out all of the share price gains since his election in November.Despite starting the trade war, Trump appeared to be infuriated by the EU’s retaliatory measures.He wrote: “If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES.“This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S.,” he added.The US already circumvents the protected geographical origin rules on European products – American supermarkets are full of US-made imitations of champagne and other delicacies such as parmesan and gorgonzola.Senior figures in Europe vowed to hold firm. “We will not give in to threats,” the French foreign trade minister, Laurent Saint-Martin, wrote on X. “Donald Trump is escalating the trade war he chose to unleash.”France was “determined to retaliate” and would “always protect our sectors”, he added.Trump wrote on Thursday: “The U.S. doesn’t have Free Trade. We have “Stupid Trade.” The Entire World is RIPPING US OFF!!!” Channeling the former US president Franklin D Roosevelt, he added: “The only thing you have to fear, is fear itself!”In France, independent winemakers represent 60% of the country’s wine production. They are watching closely to see how the dispute plays out. “We’re very prudent at this stage,” said Jean-Marie Fabre, who makes wine in Fitou in the south of France.French winemakers were concerned they could be swept into the broader tariff row, and had feared tit-for-tat measures when the EU announced retaliatory tariffs on some American products, including US whiskey.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The entire wine sector has been through a succession of crises of different kinds which have already really tested us, including the Covid crisis, inflation, the war in Ukraine and the climate issues,” said Fabre, who is also head of the Independent Winemakers of France. “Winemakers, whatever their size, but particularly small winemakers, have found themselves in a fragile position.”European shares fell on Thursday, amid concerns over the impact of a trade war. France’s Cac 40 index gave up morning gains to fall by 0.3%, while Germany’s Dax index fell by 0.6%.Leading European drinks giants came under pressure. Shares in Pernod Ricard fell almost 4% and Rémy Cointreau declined 3.5%. LVMH, owner of Moët & Chandon, slipped 1.4%.In New York, the benchmark S&P 500 dipped 0.7% after Wall Street opened for trading. Trump’s officials have attempted to brush off days of stock market declines, claiming they are not worried about it.“We’re focused on the real economy,” the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said during his latest interview on CNBC news network, a fixture on Wall Street. “I’m not concerned about a little bit of volatility over three weeks.”Trump also repeated a longstanding criticism of the EU, that the trading bloc “was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States”, calling it “one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the world”.Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive, said on Wednesday that trade between Europe and the US “brought prosperity and security to millions of people, and trade has created millions of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic”. More

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    Bardella, Leader of France’s Far-Right National Rally, Heads to Israel

    As Jordan Bardella, its young president, tries to distance the party from its history of antisemitism, it is making common cause with Israel against “Islamist ideology.”Jordan Bardella, the young president of France’s far-right National Rally, plans to visit Israel this month in a powerful symbol of his party’s shift from the home of French antisemitism to the country’s most vociferous friend of the Jews.“Antisemitism is a poison,” Mr. Bardella told Le Journal du Dimanche, a Sunday newspaper, announcing that he plans to attend a Jerusalem conference on that subject in late March and visit areas of Israel attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. “Our engagement in this combat is absolute.”No leader of the far-right party, including its perennial presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, has previously made an official visit to Israel. But the party’s stand against what it calls “Islamist ideology,” has led it to a sweeping embrace of Israel and the country’s fight against Hamas and Hezbollah. At the same time, the National Rally’s vehement anti-immigrant ideology, aimed particularly at Muslims, has earned it the support of some French Jews.No leader of the far-right party, including its perennial presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, has previously made an official visit to Israel.Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty ImagesMany French Jews, however, remain steadfast in their opposition to the party. Bernard-Henri Lévy, a prominent intellectual and author last year of the book “Israel Alone,” an impassioned paean to Israel in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, immediately announced that he had dropped out of the Jerusalem conference because Mr. Bardella is going. He informed President Isaac Herzog of Israel of his decision.Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front, which became the National Rally in 2018, famously dismissed the Holocaust as a “detail” of history and called the Nazi occupation of France “not particularly inhumane,” despite the deportation of more than 75,000 Jews to Hitler’s death camps.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump apuesta a que EE. UU. tolerará una recesión a fin de revivir la industria manufacturera

    El presidente ofrece razones para imponer aranceles, como los ingresos, la influencia sobre los competidores y la creación de empleo. Pero el pasado sugiere una historia más compleja.Las guerras comerciales simultáneas del presidente Donald Trump con Canadá, México, China y la Unión Europea equivalen a una enorme apuesta económica y política: que los estadounidenses soporten meses o años de penuria económica a cambio de la lejana esperanza de reindustrializar el corazón de Estados Unidos.Es enormemente arriesgado. En los últimos días, Trump ha reconocido, a pesar de todas sus seguras predicciones de campaña de que “vamos a tener un auge como nunca antes hemos tenido”, que Estados Unidos puede dirigirse hacia una recesión, impulsada por su programa económico. Pero, en público y en privado, ha estado argumentando que “una ligera perturbación” en la economía y los mercados es un pequeño precio a pagar por traer de vuelta a Estados Unidos los puestos de trabajo en la industria manufacturera.Sus socios políticos más cercanos están redoblando la estrategia. “La política económica del presidente Trump es sencilla”, escribió el vicepresidente JD Vance en las redes sociales el lunes. “Si inviertes y creas empleo en Estados Unidos, serás recompensado. Reduciremos las normativas y los impuestos. Pero si construyes fuera de Estados Unidos, estarás solo”.La última vez que Trump intentó algo así, durante su primer mandato, fue un fracaso. En 2018 impuso aranceles del 25 por ciento al acero y del 10 por ciento al aluminio, sosteniendo que estaba protegiendo la seguridad nacional de Estados Unidos y que, en última instancia, los aranceles crearían más puestos de trabajo en Estados Unidos. Los precios subieron y se produjo un aumento temporal de unos 5000 puestos de trabajo en todo el país. Durante la pandemia, se levantaron algunos de los aranceles, y hoy la industria emplea aproximadamente al mismo número de estadounidenses que entonces.Sin embargo, lo más preocupante fue la serie de estudios posteriores que demostraron que el país perdió decenas de miles de puestos de trabajo —más de 75.000, según un estudio— en las industrias que dependían de las importaciones de acero y aluminio. La producción por hora de los fabricantes de acero estadounidenses también había descendido, mientras que la productividad de la industria manufacturera en general en Estados Unidos aumentó.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Europe Welcomes a Ukraine Cease-Fire Offer and a Revival of U.S. Aid

    Europeans reacted with relief to the announcement on Tuesday that Ukraine had agreed with the United States on a 30-day cease-fire in its war with Russia and anxiously awaited Moscow’s response.They were relieved because Washington announced simultaneously that it would immediately restore military and intelligence support for Ukraine. And there was expectation that Russia must now respond in kind, or presumably President Trump would put some kind of pressure on Moscow analogous at least to the blunt instruments he used against Ukraine.“The ball is now in Russia’s court,” said the two European Union leaders, António Costa and Ursula von der Leyen, in coordinated messages on social media welcoming the deal and echoing the statement of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.But in the same sentence the European leaders also welcomed the resumption of U.S. security support to Ukraine, giving it equal emphasis.“We welcome today’s news from Jeddah on the U.S.-Ukraine talks, including the proposal for a cease-fire agreement and the resumption of U.S. intelligence sharing and security assistance,” the message said on Tuesday. “This is a positive development that can be a step toward a comprehensive, just and lasting peace for Ukraine.”They also tried to remind Mr. Trump and his team that if Washington wants Europe to guarantee any peace deal in Ukraine, Europe wants to be at the negotiating table. “The European Union,” the message said (hint, hint), “is ready to play its full part, together with its partners, in the upcoming peace negotiations.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Swedish Battery Maker Northvolt Collapses, a Blow to Europe

    The company and its assets will be sold after it filed for bankruptcy in Sweden, sinking Europe’s best hope for competing against Asian rivals.Northvolt, Europe’s biggest hope for producing batteries in the region to power the transition to electric vehicles, will be split up and sold after it filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday in its home country, Sweden.The company, which just a few years ago appeared to be Europe’s best chance to compete against Chinese rivals, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States last year in an attempt to buy it more time to raise money.But securing funds proved too difficult. On Wednesday, Northvolt said in a statement that a court-appointed Swedish trustee would take over the process of selling off its business and assets.The company’s subsidiaries Northvolt Germany and Northvolt North America are not part of the bankruptcy proceedings in Sweden.Founded in 2016 by a former Tesla executive, Northvolt has been struggling for months, cutting jobs and restructuring operations even before it sought bankruptcy protection.“Despite pursuing all available options to negotiate and implement a financial restructuring, including a Chapter 11 restructuring process in the United States, and despite liquidity support from our lenders and key counterparties, the company was unable to secure the necessary financial conditions to continue in its current form,” Tom Johnstone, the company’s interim chairman, said in a statement.European carmakers get their batteries from South Korea’s LG Energy Solution and Samsung, as well as the world’s leading producer, CATL of China. Northvolt sought to capture 25 percent of the European battery market by 2030.Last year, the company was able to secure a $5 billion loan from the European Union to expand its production.But it was still not enough to counteract the challenges the company faced, from accidents at a plant in Sweden to the loss of a contract with BMW worth 2 billion euros, or $2.15 billion. More

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    EU retaliates against Trump tariffs with €26bn ‘countermeasures’

    The EU has announced it will impose trade “countermeasures” on €26bn (£22bn) worth of US goods in retaliation after Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, escalating a global trade war.The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called the 25% US levies on global imports of the metals “unjustified trade restrictions”, after they came into force at 4am GMT on Wednesday.“We deeply regret this measure,” von der Leyen said in a statement, as Brussels announced it would be “launching a series of countermeasures” on 1 April. “The European Union must act to protect consumers and business,” she added.The commission said it would be targeting industrial products in response, including steel and aluminium, as well as household tools, plastics and wooden goods.In addition, the EU measures will affect some US agricultural products, such as poultry, beef, some seafood, nuts, eggs, dairy, sugar and vegetables, provided they are approved by member states.The retaliatory measures will also entail Brussels reimposing the tariffs on US goods including bourbon whiskey, jeans and Harley-Davidson motorbikes that it introduced during the first Trump term.“We will always remain open to negotiation. We firmly believe that in a world fraught with geopolitical and economic uncertainties, it is not in our common interest to burden our economies with tariffs,” von der Leyen said.France’s European affairs minister, Benjamin Haddad, said on Wednesday that the EU could “go further” in its response to the US tariffs. The measures “are proportionate”, Haddad told TF1 television. “If it came to a situation where we had to go further, digital services or intellectual property could be included,” he said.Britain would not issue its own immediate measures in response to the US tariffs but was going to “reserve our right to retaliate”, a UK minister said.The exchequer secretary to the Treasury, James Murray, told Times Radio the levies were disappointing but “we want to take a pragmatic approach, and we’re already negotiating rapidly toward an economic agreement with the US, with the potential to eliminate additional tariffs”.Asked by Sky News whether Britain’s response to the levies could be called weak in comparison with Brussels, Murray said the UK was in a “very different position than the EU” and does not want to be “pushed off course” as it pursues a trade deal with Washington.“We think the right response is to continue pragmatically, cool-headedly, without a knee-jerk response, but toward our economic agreement that we’re negotiating with the US to secure, because that’s in the best interests of the UK,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis comments came after the prime minister, Keir Starmer, said on Tuesday that Britain would not respond with its own counter-tariffs, after last-ditch efforts to persuade Trump to spare British industry from his global tariffs appeared to have failed.The UK steel industry warned that Trump’s tariffs “couldn’t come at a worse time”, and said the move would have “hugely damaging consequences for UK suppliers and their customers in the US”.Gareth Stace, the director general of the trade association UK Steel, called the Trump administration’s move “hugely disappointing”. He said: “President Trump must surely recognise that the UK is an ally, not a foe. Our steel sector is not a threat to the US but a partner to key customers, sharing the same values and objectives in addressing global overcapacity and tackling unfair trade.“These tariffs couldn’t come at a worse time for the UK steel industry, as we battle with high energy costs and subdued demand at home, against an oversupplied and increasingly protectionist global landscape.”The introduction of EU measures came after a day of drama on Tuesday, when Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium in response to Canadian threats to increase electricity prices for US customers.The US president backed off from those plans after the Ontario premier, Doug Ford, agreed to suspend his province’s decision to impose a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the states of Minnesota, Michigan and New York. More