The Tories have criticised the government for not being “quicker” with talks about tariffs imposed by the US. Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride said Labour’s comments about Trump whilst they were the opposition were “unhelpful” and could have “soured” relations with the Trump administration. Report by Faragt. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Well, can I firstly say that this is a big move because this is an important sector for us,
00:05about 100,000 vehicles exported to the States every year and a lot of livelihoods depend upon it.
00:10What we need to do is to get a deal with the Trump White House such that we carve these tariffs out
00:17of the arrangements that they're entering into. I think the government should have been quicker
00:23in the room to start those discussions, they're obviously ongoing, and I think it was unhelpful
00:27some of the comments that were made when the current government was in opposition about
00:31Donald Trump which rather soured the beginning of that relationship, which is part of the reason
00:36why the engagement I think has been rather later than it should have been. Tariffs don't help
00:40anybody, ultimately they won't help the Americans, they won't help the world economy or indeed
00:44ourselves and I think given what we saw yesterday with a statement from the Chancellor, we have a
00:50very fragile economy today, we have a fairly limited headroom and we have a lot of challenges,
00:56not least the fact that growth has been halved according to the ABR for this year,
01:00so this is a big potential headwind and a problem for us.