Brandon Barford is a senior advisor at GMTL Advisory Ltd. Sam Hogg is the founder of Beijing to Britain.

Later this year, the U.K. and the U.S. could both have new leaders: Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Donald Trump. The “special relationship” between the two countries will then enter a new, likely strained period, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will figure in the tensions between Washington and London.

So, what should U.K. policymakers and investors be considering ahead of all this?

Trump has been clear that on trade he wants to confront China directly, and that he’d like to accelerate the U.S.’s decoupling from China’s economy for both economic and national security reasons. This includes revoking China’s “most favored nation” status, adopting a four-year plan to phase out Chinese imports of essential goods, restricting outbound investment in China, as well as Chinese investment in the U.S.

Trump also plans to impose a “universal tariff” of 10 percent on goods imported to the U.S., which will likely apply to free trade agreement (FTA) partners and allies including the U.K. Tariffs on Chinese imports will be at least 60 percent, with current U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent tariff announcement spurring Trump on. And he will use these tariffs to demonstrate his readiness to protect U.S. workers — and to force other nations to the negotiating table.

This U.S. agenda will leave the future Labour government in a predicament. The U.K.’s relationship with the PRC is fundamentally different from Washington’s, and although national security and industrial strategy are elements of economic policy, the size of the U.S. economy grants it options the U.K. doesn’t have.

There are already some areas of discord between the two countries when it comes to China: For example, unlike the U.S., no U.K. law explicitly banning products from Xinjiang currently exists. And in contrast to both the Trump and Biden administrations, the U.K. government doesn’t agree that China has committed genocide in the region — a bone of contention for human rights advocates.

https://www.politico.eu/