Trump is 'using Tariffs to fight a culture war against Europe,' says Rory Stewart as UK faces prospect of 25% levies

1 April 2025, 18:56

Andrew Marr speaks to Rory Stewart

The United States is using tariffs on Europe to win a culture war and “force compliance” with its views on free speech, Rory Stewart has told LBC.

The former Conservative Minister said Donald Trump’s use of tariffs on the UK and Europe is to enforce political views and is “very, very worrying” but “was easy to see coming.”

It comes ahead of “liberation day”, where Donald Trump has promised to slap wide-ranging tariffs on almost every country on earth, including the UK.

The tariffs come following a warning from the US State Department that there can be “no free trade with the UK without free speech” after an anti-abortion protester was charged with an offence for holding up a sign outside a clinic.

Mr Stewart told LBC’s Andrew Marr: “So there are two things going on. One of them is that Donald Trump loves tariffs.

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“And he loves tariffs because they're a very easy thing for him to do.

“He's developed this emergency power which allows him to put tariffs on and take tariffs off.

“And the second thing is, of course, they are essentially trying to fight a culture war against Europe, against the United Kingdom and European countries. And it's a very broad-ranging war. It's basically a war against a form of liberalism that they don't like.

“It's partly about talking about Tommy Robinson. It's also about supporting the far right in Germany. It's also about a lot of the stuff they're doing about defence.

“And it was almost inevitable that those two things were eventually going to come together.

“And what I think we can expect is that there will be more and more interference in the way in which we run our own countries and an attempt to use tariffs to try to force compliance.”

Mr Stewart added that the US has essentially abandoned its traditional allies in Europe and Canada in favour of more autocratic states in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“It's as though he believes he doesn't need allies anymore. It's a very odd thing for anybody, even a big superpower, to feel that you don't need any allies in the world.

“You had this extraordinary interview which Steve Witkoff, his trade envoy, gave, where he said Europe was dying and that the future was Israel, Saudi and UAE.

“So I think they seem to believe that the way to allow their worldview to predominate is to attack exactly the kind of states which for 70, 80 years have been America's natural allies.”