Sir Keir Starmer has been urged to “focus on strengthening economic growth” domestically after striking several agreements with China.
Speaking to GB News, Republican commentator Nora Lee Notzon declared the Prime Minister’s visit to Beijing is “not a good look” amid growing tensions with Donald Trump.
Taking aim at Sir Keir’s visit to China, Mr Trump was asked what he thought of “UK going into business with China”.
The President responded: “Well it’s very dangerous for them to do that. Even more dangerous, I think, for Canada. Canada is not doing well. They’re doing very poorly, and you can’t look at China as the answer.”
Asked by host Miriam Cates whether Britain should be “equally worried” as Canada about a threat from Mr Trump over China, Ms Notzon told GB News: “It’s interesting in light of all the rhetoric we’ve had over Greenland at Davos and obviously with Afghanistan, what you’re seeing is a bit of pushback from the Western alliance, and Keir Starmer going to China to develop this relationship.
“China is the fourth largest partner, not the largest. The largest is the US by fourfold actually. So if there’s anybody to be cozying up to, it’s really the US.”
She added: “What has he done? He’s cut a deal on whiskey tariffs from 10 per cent to five per cent, and who’s celebrating? The Chinese, they get cheaper whiskey. Why? Because we’ve also done a deal of almost £11billion, AstraZeneca setting up manufacturing over there.
“What did China do to the US? They were trying to hold the US hostage on pharma, the manufacturing that was happening there. They were trying to hold the US hostage on the rare earths that are key to defence, to semiconductors.”
Nora Lee Notzon has urged Keir Starmer to ‘focus on strengthening Britain’ amid Donald Trump’s China warning
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PA / GB NEWS
Echoing Mr Trump’s warning to Sir Keir, Ms Notzon cautioned: “And this is why Trump says it’s a dangerous game that you’re playing with China.
“We understand Keir Starmer’s trying to play this leverage game of politics, the ‘let’s look like we’re strong with them’, but he’s just given them the embassy they want, given them Chagos Island, it’s not a good look for the UK when they should really be focusing on strengthening economic growth here and attracting people to invest here.”
Highlighting some “hypocrisy” in Sir Keir’s negotiations with China, the Republican argued: “China’s known for it’s human and rights violations with the Muslim community, we think they’ve killed over a million people.
“And then with the famous pro-democracy media mogul in Hong Kong who’s facing life imprisonment, they don’t uphold the values of the Western world, so there’s a very big question about the hypocrisy there.”
Donald Trump described the Prime Minister’s trip as ‘very dangerous’
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GETTYQuizzed on whether the UK “needs China a lot more than the US”, Ms Notzon disagreed: “I would disagree that Britain needs China. I think what Britain needs is its number one trading partner, which is the US.
“And if you think about trade, who is it cheapest to trade with? The person that is closest to you geographically, so either with Europe or with the US. So I think it’s a bad move and it just indicates the failure of his own policies within the UK that he’s having to look outward to China.”
She added: “You need to build your own dependency internally, but there’s also this political dance going on right now where a lot of the Western countries, based on most recent rhetoric from Trump, feel that they need to diversify their relationships just to have a little bit of leverage in negotiations with the Trump administration.”
Discussing Donald Trump’s movements in Iran, Ms Notzon revealed that “something could be imminent”.
Nora Lee Notzon said Donald Trump might ‘pair back’ his action in Iran
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GB NEWS
She told the People’s Channel: “I’ve been on the phone this morning with people in the US, and everybody thinks something is imminent.
“And the Iranian regime has been very clear that they will attack US bases in the region and it will get messy if this is what happens.
“We don’t know if calmer minds will prevail and if the Iranian regime will find some way to negotiate out of this, but we saw what Trump did in Venezuela and I think something is imminent.
“There’s a lot of problems that Trump needs to take care of in order to win the midterms right now, so he’s balancing a lot of moving parts. But he needs to have strong language. And we know Trump, his style is to talk strong, and so he might pair it back like we saw with with Europe on the whole Greenland issue.”