West “cannot be agnostic or naive” on where the goods are made, the chancellor has counted a meeting of foreign finance ministers while preparing for conversations with his American counterpart.
Rachel Reeves told spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund in Washington that she wanted to see that tariffs and commercial barriers fall, but added that the United States “has one point” that global trade had become too unbalanced.
Arguing that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom had “a democratic mandate of people to change things,” he said: “There has been a feeling in my country and in the United States and in many other developed countries that the system we have today offers for some, but not for all and that jobs have fostered in certain sectors of the economy.”
She continued saying that global commercial imbalances were “a problem” because “it matters where things are done and who does them.”
The Chancellor said: “We cannot be agnostic or naive about it, especially in the world in which we live today where resilience and security matter more than they have done for a long time.”
His comments are ahead of a meeting with the United States Treasury Secretary, Scott Besent on Friday, which is expected to discuss a possible commercial agreement of the United Kingdom and the United States aimed at mitigating the impact of the rates announced by Donald Trump in early April.
The president of the United States imposed an import tax of 10% in the goods, as well as a 25% charge on steel, aluminum and cars, partly as an attempt to return manufacturing jobs to the United States.
But they also follow a government movement to take over the operation of the British steel, and the ministers argue that it was a matter of national security to ensure that the United Kingdom retained some primary steel manufacturing capacity instead of seeing it subcontracted to China.
Mrs. Reeves made her comments during a discussion panel about the future of the global economy, which saw the IMF managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, praise her efforts to “raise growth in the United Kingdom.”
Mrs. Georgieva said: “She is addressing very difficult problems, obtaining the reprotation of expenses, getting the regulatory environment more rational and then assuming the battle to do so, and is really impressive.”
