Donald Trump said it was “very dangerous” for Britain to deal with China, as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer continued his visit to Beijing.
The US president was reacting to agreements announced after Sir Keir met Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of a three-day trip aimed at resetting relations between the UK and China.
The agreements are aimed at increasing business and investment between the two countries.
“Well it’s very dangerous for them to do that,” Trump said at the premiere of a documentary about his wife Melania when asked what he thought of Britain increasing business ties with China.
The comment comes after Sir Keir said the UK’s relationship with China was in a “good, strong place” following his meeting with Xi at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday.
Sir Keir said on Friday that the “very good meetings” with Xi provided “just the level of engagement that we hoped for”.
“We warmly engaged and made some real progress, actually, because the UK has got a huge amount to offer,” he told a meeting of the UK-China Business Forum at the Bank of China in Beijing.
So far several things have come out of Sir Keir’s trip including an agreement on visa-free travel and lower whisky tariffs, as well as a £10.9bn investment by AstraZeneca to build manufacturing facilities in China.
Agreements on further co-operation in other areas such as organised crime and illegal immigration were also announced.
The chair of the British Chamber of Commerce in China, Chris Torrens, praised Sir Keir’s visit to Beijing as “successful”.
Mr Torrens told the BBC “it makes sense for UK to be looking to China, it’s one of its larger trading partners”.
He added that other western leaders have either been to Beijing recently or will do soon, and that includes Trump who is expected to visit in April.
“The US are maybe sanctioning and reprimanding other economies and slapping tariffs on countries that are doing deals with China but the US itself may well do a deal with China. In fact we expect that this year,” Mr Torrens told the BBC.
Trump earlier this week threatened to impose tariffs on Canada if it went through with economic deals struck with China on a recent visit to Beijing by its leader Mark Carney.
After remarking on the UK’s engagement with China, Trump said it was “even more dangerous, I think, for Canada”.
“Canada is not doing well. They’re doing very poorly, and you can’t look at China as the answer,” he said.
The prime minister was later due to travel to Shanghai before leaving for Tokyo to meet his Japanese counterpart Sanae Takaichi for a working dinner.
Opposition MPs have criticised Sir Keir over the trip.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Sir Keir “has gone to Beijing to kowtow to President Xi” and accused the government of trading “national security for economic crumbs off the Chinese table”.
The US was the UK’s largest trading partner in 2025, while China was the fourth largest, according to the Department for Business and Trade.
by BBC NEWS
