My guest is Peter Foster.

Peter Foster is the public policy editor at the Financial Times. Welcome back to the podcast, Peter. Thanks, Paul. Right. We're going to talk about the impact of Trump's return to the White House on the UK's relationship with the EU. And your public policy editor title also means that you are

the FTs, not self-style, but widely recognise leading expert on EUK relations. And of course,

you for many years, you were a journalist in Washington, D.C., where we first met. So you are

particularly well qualified to talk about this. My opening question to you, Peter, is all this talk, obviously, since the Trump victory,

but in the past week or so, that's time for the UK to make this kind of binary choice now.

Where does your destiny lie with the US or the EU?

Is that a bit too quick off the mark?

And some of these arguments are slightly

premature to say the least? Well, it's definitely quick off the mark in the sense that we just don't

know what Trump is going to do. We know what he said he's going to do, 60% tariffs on China,

tariff wall of 10 or even 20% on all goods coming into the US. But how quickly that happens will depend what

legal routes he uses. Who does he finally appoint to the trade or treasury portfolio? Do we see

a return of Bob Lighthizer, who is a real protectionist or do we see somebody more mainstream?

So I think that's the first point to make. We don't know

how quickly this is going to happen and we don't know the routes is going to happen. It could be,

I'm not a legal expert, Paul, but reading around, there is a kind of emergency. He could try and

declare an emergency using a piece of legislation in the states that could see tariffs

impose really quite quickly, the back end of the first quarter, second quarter next year.

But there are other routes that use, you know, the existing Section 301 measures that will, as I

understand it, take much longer.

So I think that's the first thing.

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