Sir Keir Starmer will on Thursday launch a new trade strategy focused on boosting UK services exports, while strengthening anti-dumping defences to protect Britain from the fallout from Donald Trump’s global tariff war.
Trade minister Douglas Alexander said Starmer would set out a policy based on hard-headed “pragmatic patriotism”, embracing free trade and seeking to build markets across the world, including China and the Gulf.
“Our strategic response to this new world can’t be based on nostalgia or post imperial delusion, let alone any ideological or dogmatic attachment to one trading bloc or another,” Alexander told the Financial Times.