Starmer's trade deal with Trump is an unforgivable betrayal of British farmers
Great showman that he is, Donald Trump casually dropped papers containing the tariff deal on the ground and waited for the Prime Minister to pick them up – or so it appeared. If it was deliberate it was smart. It served to underline to his core voters in US farming states that the president had their backs, and had the Brits scrabbling around for crumbs beneath his table.
The White House statement on the deal unequivocally paints American farmers as the winners: 'The deal includes billions of dollars of increased market access… especially in agriculture, dramatically increasing access for American beef, ethanol, and virtually all of the products produced by our great farmers.'
It is not hard to see who the losers are. The import of 1.4 billion litres of bioethanol annually – spookily the exact size of the UK market – is a direct threat to the UK's two bioethanol plants in Hull and Teesside. There is already talk of closure. It would be surprising if our US competitors, with their lower costs and greater economies of scale, did not ensure that they undercut our producers so that they do fold and we become reliant on US imports for evermore thereafter. So much for Labour's commitment to national fuel security.
The Government has so far avoided publishing impact statements that must surely have been produced before the deal was agreed. The knock-on effect on our agricultural base will be even more serious.
Vivergo Fuels, our largest bioethanol producer, estimates that 1,220 farming jobs are at risk on the 12,000 farms that supply them with wheat. More seriously, many arable farmers are already thinking of giving up. When the subsidy was often the only profit and that has now all but been removed.
And when the reliable bioethanol market for wheat that fails to meet the milling standard, usually for weather related reasons, disappears along with a much needed floor in the wheat price, the risk of carrying on growing cereals will be too great for many. The price of bread may well rise as a result. The option for many farmers would have been to go into beef production instead, but with 13,000 tons of tariff free US beef coming our way that industry also looks shaky.
One can forgive the Government for deciding that the greater good lay in protecting jobs in manufacturing industries and that farmers had to take one for the team. What is unforgivable is leaving our farmers at a huge disadvantage. The unilateral disarmament approach to subsidies had already left our farmers vulnerable to well subsidised overseas competitors.
The imposition of inheritance tax on family farms – but, significantly, not on institutionally owned ones – has then loaded a massive cost onto farmers. Meanwhile only US farmers with assets over $27.22 million (for married couples) need to pay it.
Prime Minister, if you are going to shaft us in trade deals, at least acknowledge it and look at what can be done to compensate through other policies.
Jamie Blackett is a farmer and the author of Red Rag to a Bull and Land of Milk and Honey
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