Britain ‘on recession watch’ if Trump follows through on Greenland trade war threats amid fears US ‘can’t be counted on’

Britain will face the threat of a new recession if Donald Trump follows through on his Greenland trade war threats.

There has been alarm that the US President’s latest extraordinary salvo against his long-time allies could crush the weak growth achieved.

As well as rising costs for British exporters, there could also be serious damage from international instability caused by Mr Trump.

We breathed a sigh of relief last week after the announcement of better-than-expected GDP figures for November.

But UK plc has been in virtual recession for months due to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ brutal tax raids.

Keir Starmer boasted that his trade deal with Mr Trump put Britain in a good position to counter the US president’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff attack on partners.

After following a horizontal course in the three months until October, the economy entered the positive zone in the three months until November.

However, under these conditions a 10 percent duty was still imposed on almost all products, and some other provisions were never implemented.

In a bombshell post on his social media site yesterday, Mr Trump said tariffs would be imposed on any NATO allies that did not give in to his demand to seize the Greenland-Denmark territory.

Taxes will start at 10 percent and potentially rise to 25 percent if they don’t surrender by June.

In addition to England, he also highlighted France, Germany and Denmark.

The intervention drew an angry response from Western leaders amid fresh fears that Mr Trump intends to tear up the military alliance that has kept world peace for the past eight decades.

David Henig, director of the UK Trade Policy Project, said confidence in the US sticking to its commitments would be shattered.

‘This is all the agreements the USA has already made. “It was always possible that these would be temporary, but now it has been proven,” he shared on X.

He added: ‘Tariffs will always be negative, but the fact that US trade policy has descended into chaos again is even worse.

‘Complete uncertainty for importers and exporters hoping for a quieter year.’

Crawford Falconer, the UK government’s former chief trade negotiator, told Times Radio that a 25 per cent tariff on top of the current 10 per cent baseline would ‘pretty well take everyone out of the US market’.

This would be ‘very damaging’ even though the bulk of UK exports are in services rather than goods.

We told ourselves that we could stabilize the situation if we made a deal with them, but it just shows that even if you’re the best kid in class, you still take chances when another problem arises. “Therefore, there is no real security in trade,” he added.

Marco Forgione, from the Institute of Export and International Trade, told the Telegraph: ‘We will see trade in goods with the US suddenly become uncompetitive in the market.

‘So the impact on the UK will be huge, particularly at a time when we are struggling with very stagnant growth.

UK plc has been in virtual recession for months amid Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ brutal tax raids (photo taken in Darlington last week)

‘If it imposes these tariffs and they continue for a period of time, this will put extreme pressure on the UK economy and could potentially be enough to push the UK into recession.’

Tariffs would be damaging for Britain’s critical pharmaceutical sector and car manufacturers, former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt told the BBC with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday.

However, he warned that this would also impose great costs on the United States.

‘Amrica is an unstable market, he says. “It’s not a market you can trust,” he added.