LONDON — Tony Blair urged Keir Starmer to avoid retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. after President Donald Trump slapped 10 percent tariffs on all British exports heading to America.
The former British prime minister, who tried to embody the so-called special relationship between the U.K. and U.S. during his decade in power from 1997 to 2007, said Britain wouldn’t benefit from an antagonistic response.
“I don’t think it is in the U.K.’s best interest to retaliate,” Blair told students at King’s College London in comments first reported by the Independent, as he praised Starmer’s “cool heads” response to the tariffs.
British ministers have insisted they are working intensively to reach an economic agreement with the U.S. that would allow tariffs to be reversed. But Treasury Minister James Murray told Sky News on Friday that businesses were being asked to point to products where tariffs would hurt U.K. companies the least.
“We want to involve businesses in that decision, and we need to be clear that we keep all options on the table,” Murray said. “We reserve the right to retaliate, but we want a deal, and our full focus is on that.”
Trump claimed Starmer was pleased Britain avoided the 20 percent tariffs slapped on EU goods.
“We have a very good dialogue,” the U.S. president said Thursday. “I think he was very happy about how we treated them with tariffs.”
Blair, a former Labour prime minister who dealt with Republican U.S. President George W. Bush for much of his premiership, also expressed concern about Trump’s weakened support for NATO. After the 1990s Kosovo War, Blair said he tried to encourage strengthened European defense spending.
“It became clear to me that we could never have done it without the Americans. I thought, ‘This is crazy — what happens if the Americans decide they don’t want to be part of it?’” Blair said. “But it got caught up in a whole lot of Euroskeptic arguments.”
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