BBC -Donald Trump said it was “very dangerous” for the UK to do business with China, as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer arrived in Shanghai on the third day of his visit to the country.
The US president was reacting to agreements aimed at increasing business and investment between the UK and China, announced after Sir Keir met Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Speaking at the premiere of a documentary about his wife Melania on Thursday, Trump went on to refer to Xi as a “friend” of his and said he knew the Chinese president “very well”.
UK business minister Sir Chris Bryant said Trump was “wrong” and it would be “bonkers frankly for the UK to ignore the presence of China on the world stage”.
“Of course, we enter into our relationship with China with our eyes wide open,” he added.
The business minister also pointed out that Trump is due to visit China himself in April.
In response to Trump’s remarks, Downing Street indicated that Washington had been aware of this trip and its objectives in advance.
Arriving at the premiere of the Melania film on Thursday, the US president was asked by a reporter: “What do you think about the UK going into business with China?”
Beyond his brief comments, Trump did not say anything further about the UK’s engagement with China, pivoting instead to Canada and delivering a similar warning.
He said it was “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,” he added.
Earlier this week, the US president threatened to impose tariffs on Canada if it went through with economic deals struck with China on a recent visit to Beijing by its Prime Minister, Mark Carney.
The comments come after Sir Keir said the UK’s relationship with China was in a “good, strong place” following his talks with Xi at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday.
Sir Keir said on Friday that the “very good meetings” with Xi had provided “just the level of engagement that we hoped for”.
“We warmly engaged and made some real progress, actually, because the UK has got a huge amount to offer,” he told a meeting of the UK-China Business Forum at the Bank of China in Beijing.
So far several things have come out of Sir Keir’s trip including an agreement on visa-free travel and lower whisky tariffs, as well as a £10.9bn investment by AstraZeneca to build manufacturing facilities in China.
An agreement aimed at tackling organised crime and illegal immigration will see the UK and China share intelligence to identify the supply routes of people smugglers.
The UK government says the inflatable dinghies used in small boat crossings often contain parts sourced in China.
Other deals include agreement to co-operate on reducing red tape for UK exporters and collaborate on health challenges such as antimicrobial resistance.
The US was the UK’s largest single country trading partner in 2025, while China was the fourth largest, according to the Department for Business and Trade.
The chair of the British Chamber of Commerce in China, Chris Torrens, praised Sir Keir’s visit to Beijing as “successful”.
Torrens told the BBC it made “sense for the UK to be looking to China, it’s one of its larger trading partners”.
He added that other Western leaders had either been to Beijing recently or would do so soon.
“The US are maybe sanctioning and reprimanding other economies and slapping tariffs on countries that are doing deals with China but the US itself may well do a deal with China. In fact we expect that this year,” Torrens told the BBC.
Sir Keir arrived in Shanghai on Friday morning, his last stop in China before leaving for Tokyo to meet his Japanese counterpart, Sanae Takaichi, for a working dinner.
Opposition MPs have criticised the prime minister over his trip to China – the first by a UK leader since 2018 – over the risk posed to the UK’s national security and Xi’s human rights record.
China has been accused of “serious human rights violations” by the UN against the Uyghur population and other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups.
It has also been criticised over the treatment of Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who is facing life in prison.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Sir Keir had “gone to Beijing to kowtow to President Xi” and accused the government of trading “national security for economic crumbs off the Chinese table”.
Earlier this month, the government received similar criticism when it approved China’s plans for a huge new embassy in central London.
Security Minister Dan Jarvis said intelligence agencies had been “integral” to that decision-making process, and he was “content any risks are being appropriately managed”.
