Labour Should Be Ready to Bend Rules During Trade Talks, IPPR Says

A tugboat helps move the MSC Loreto container ship Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg Photo by Chris Ratcliffe /Bloomberg

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(Bloomberg) — The UK’s Labour government must be willing to bend international rules and ease its concerns over other countries’ human rights records when negotiating new trade partnerships, the left-wing Institute for Public Policy Research think tank said.

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Ministers have committed to boosting growth but won’t be able to avoid “uncomfortable trade-offs” in what has become an “increasingly unstable and uncertain world” since US President Donald Trump launched a global trade war last month, according to the report.

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“This is a profoundly difficult time in international economic policy and is very different to the last time Labour was in power,” said IPPR associate director for international policy Laura Chappell. “This isn’t a world stuffed with win-wins. Right now the government needs a clear sense of its priorities.”

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The IPPR, which has close links to Labour and whose former executive director Carys Roberts is now a Downing Street special adviser, said the government will need to be “pragmatic about trade deals with countries that don’t share all our values” and “flexible in observing international law.”

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That means working with administrations that have “differing viewpoints, including on issues such as human rights.” It pointed out that the World Trade Organization is not functioning and countries such as the US are now “routinely cherry-picking which rules to observe and which to flout.”

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Labour is in talks about a new trading arrangement with the US to walk back some of the tariffs Trump has imposed on UK exports, as well as holding discussions with the European Union, India and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

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The UK has also been engaging heavily with China, whose authorities have been accused of human rights abuses. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband have visited Beijing, while Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has a trip planned and Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Chinese President Xi Jinping last November.

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As well being willing to break trade rules and tolerate human rights abuses, the government should prioritize securing energy, defense, food, communications, health care and pharmaceutical supply chains over “economic efficiency,” the IPPR said.

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Sticking to the letter of international trade law would undermine the government’s industrial strategy plans and drive for economic resilience, the think tank added. It signaled that building closer relations with the EU should be a priority.

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