Hearts & Minds: How not to fill the void in Trump’s tariff guessing game

Tomorrow is Liberation Day, when Donald Trump unveils his raft of new tariffs, on top of the already announced 25% levy on car and car parts. Foreign leaders, the media, public, markets do not know if they are coming or going, which is how he prefers it. He loves to leave them guessing, something he honed over years in the cauldron of Manhattan real estate negotiations.

Faced with that, what should be the comms strategy be? In the UK, Sir Keir Starmer has adopted a strategy of always saying something, even when there is not much to say. We are told by Downing Street that talks between the two sides have been ‘constructive’. But this was said while the President was saying the tariffs would hit all countries, not just those with the biggest trade imbalances with the US.

Starmer feels obliged to fill the silence - dangerous, comms-wise and to be avoided. So, we are then treated to this from his spokesman: ‘When it comes to tariffs, the Prime Minister has been clear he will always act in the national interest and we've been preparing for all eventualities ahead of the announcement from President Trump, which we would expect the UK to be impacted by alongside other countries’.

The talks - what talks, by whom, where? - ‘will likely continue beyond Wednesday’. The UK will ‘take a calm and pragmatic approach’, ‘a trade war with the US is not in anybody's interests.’ But ‘we rule nothing out in response.’

Or, put it another way, courtesy of Sodali’s Steve Marinker: ‘I don’t know if you are going to kick me in the shins, but if you to decide kick me in the shins, I want to tell you in advance that I don’t plan to kick you back. Having said that, I don’t rule out the possibility of kicking you in the shins at some point in the future. Or I might do something unrelated to shins. Or I might not. My main message though is that it would be better if neither of us kicked each other in the shins, but just to be clear, I don’t plan to kick you in the shins under any circumstances. Except I might.’

Got that? Sometimes it really is best to wait, and certainly that is the case with Trump until he finally reveals his hand, to say very little.

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.