Departments and agencies need the support of a clear cross-government apparatus to help them navigate the challenges generated by US president Donald Trump’s new administration, the Institute for Government has said.
The think tank said that the first weeks of Trump’s second stint in the White House had seen "profound” interventions from Washington DC on global trade and security, which had to be factored into the UK government’s policymaking.
IfG senior fellow Jill Rutter said Trump’s plans to end the war in Ukraine, speculative proposals to redevelop the Gaza Strip, and the introduction of 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports had “torched the world trade order and the bedrock of Western security since the second world war” in the space of a week.
Rutter said the Trump administration’s scraping of US Agency for International Development programmes and expected withdrawal from the World Health Organization would also have direct impacts for the UK.
She added that work to streamline the operations of federal government under tech billionaire Elon Musk could have implications beyond US domestic borders – such as if aviation safety is compromised. Rutter pointed to the failure of US financial regulation in the 2000s, which laid the ground for the global financial crisis towards the end of that decade.
In an IfG comment piece, Rutter said that while it would be impossible for the UK government to “Trump-proof” policy, the potential threat posed by the new administration needed to be properly managed.
“It is not clear yet how the UK is coordinating its response to the US,” she said. “Much will depend on the [Peter] Mandelson-[Jonathan] Powell axis – with the UK’s new US ambassador working with the national security adviser, who is effectively Keir Starmer’s foreign policy chief of staff.
“Beneath that, the national security side of the Cabinet Office will need to coordinate with the new EU and international economic team under the newly returned Michael Ellam, and they will need to help a cabinet secretary with wide domestic but zero international experience.”
Rutter said that domestic policy would also require co-ordination, with the UK expected to have to choose between following US or EU regulation at home in the post-Brexit era.
“There needs to be a point where all this comes together," she said. “That comes on top of the upending of the spending review to accommodate near inevitable increases in defence spending which will preoccupy much of Whitehall for the coming months.”
Rutter said the “clear apparatus” required for managing the risks emerging from the new US administration did not demand a COBRA-style approach, usually reserved for acute crises.
She concluded: “It may require something modelled on the National Economic Council that Gordon Brown set up to manage the response to the global financial crisis in 2008-9, with core departments, notably FCDO, Defence, Treasury and DBT, and wider Whitehall engaged to look both at immediate responses and to develop longer-term strategy.”
Rutter’s piece suggested that direct risks from the termination of USAID programmes would include both immediate humanitarian consequences and “voids” that could create opportunities for China, along with “increased risks of cross-border spillovers”.
She added that bird flu is spreading in the US at a time when the Trump administration is withdrawing from the WHO and defunding organisations that would normally be in the forefront of handling a public-health emergency.