Greenland: Proposed US Tariffs

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

As noble Lords would imagine, we are speaking constantly—this is happening in real time—with our friends, allies and partners in NATO and beyond. Any meetings that are needed to be convened will, I am sure, happen. The impact of these tariffs would be extremely damaging, not least to our car industry, aerospace, the life sciences and steel. It is not something that we wish to see happen and we hope that this proposal can be averted.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I feel that it is obvious to everyone that the US President is an unserious person whose actions have very serious consequences. The threat from the US to not only a very close ally in the European Union but a NATO partner—and then punishing us for standing with it—is utterly reprehensible. As the Minister said, the PM has said that the actions are “completely wrong”, but the Government refuse to raise a formal complaint to the WTO, the rules of which these actions are trashing. The Prime Minister said that they are completely wrong because they are economic coercion, but has refused to put in place protective anti-coercion measures. What is the point of saying something is completely wrong when you do completely nothing as a result of it?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

It is called diplomacy. Our aim is to de-escalate the situation and not take measures which would inevitably cause this to escalate and become more damaging for our manufacturers and for people’s jobs and livelihoods in the United Kingdom.