Trump warns Britain on China ties as Starmer hails progress in Beijing

US President Donald Trump said it was dangerous for Britain to be getting into business with Beijing, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer lauded the economic benefits of resetting relations with China during a visit there on Friday.

As Western leaders reel from Trump’s unpredictability, Starmer is the latest to head to China.

In three-hour talks with President Xi Jinping on Thursday, the British leader called for a “more sophisticated relationship” with improved market access, lower tariffs and investment deals while also discussing football and Shakespeare.

Starmer hailed deals on visa-free travel and lower whisky tariffs as “really important access, symbolic of what we’re doing with the relationship”.

“That is the way that we build the mutual trust and respect that is so important,” Starmer said.

Before heading for the financial hub of Shanghai, he met Chinese business leaders, such as Yin Tongyue, chief executive of carmaker Chery, which plans to open a research and development centre for its commercial vehicle arm in the English city of Liverpool, a city official said during Starmer’s visit.

Not choosing between US and China

Starmer, whose centre-left Labour government has struggled to deliver the economic growth it promised, has made improving relations with the world’s second-largest economy a priority.

His visit to China comes amid Trump’s on-off threats of trade tariffs and pledges to grab control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, which have rattled long-standing US allies, Britain among them.

Because of his country’s long history of working closely with the United States, Britain could continue to strengthen economic ties with China without angering Trump, Starmer told reporters on the aeroplane en route to China.

“The relationship we have with the United States is one of the closest … we hold,” he said, enumerating areas such as defence, security, intelligence and trade.

Starmer said Britain would not have to choose between closer ties with the United States or China, highlighting Trump’s September visit to Britain that unveiled 150 billion pounds of US investment into the country.

Washington also received advanced notice of Britain’s objectives for the China trip, a British government official said on condition of anonymity as the matter is a sensitive one.

Starmer, who normally avoids criticising Trump, has been more willing to defy the US president in recent weeks.

He urged Trump to apologise for his “frankly appalling” remarks last week that some NATO troops avoided frontline combat and said he would not yield to his demands to annex Greenland.

Tough export market

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is expected to visit China soon, and Carney was preceded by French President Emmanuel Macron in December, when Xi accompanied him on a rare trip outside the capital.

“To all world leaders meeting with Xi Jinping: China sells nothing but cheap products and cheap friendships,” the Republican-led US House Foreign Affairs Committee said on X on Thursday.

Before Trump’s comments on the closer ties, his Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said it was unlikely that Starmer’s efforts with China would pay off.

“The Chinese are the greatest exporters and they are very, very difficult when you’re trying to export to them,” he told reporters. “So good luck if the British are trying to export to China … it’s just unlikely.”

Asked if Trump would threaten Britain with tariffs as he did Canada, Lutnick replied, “Unless the prime minister of Britain sort of takes on the United States and says very difficult things, I doubt it.”