Kemi Badenoch criticises ‘fake conversation’ of Brexit damage as UK-Italy trade partnership signed
Fixating on the short-term damage caused by Brexit is a “fake conversation”, the new Business and Trade Secretary has said, adding that it will “take time” for the shape of Britain’s new economic arrangements to become clear.
In her first broadcast interview since business was added to her job brief, Kemi Badenoch told Sky News that she “can’t get in a time machine” and go back into the EU.
She said: “What I find frustrating is that we spend loads of time trying to re-litigate Brexit rather than focusing on solving new issues.”
She was talking after signing a new “trade partnership” with Italy – the first with a European nation post-Brexit.
The deal makes no change to the UK and Italy’s key trading regulations – from tariffs and quotas to customs rules – but she said it would help improve trade between the nations.
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When it was pointed out that the flow of goods and services between Italy and the UK has fallen since Brexit, Mrs Badenoch said: “It is the long-term trend that I need to work towards rather than what happened this year or last year.
“I think that that is actually what I would call a ‘fake conversation’. It’s like asking people who just got married: ‘where’s the baby, where’s the baby?’
“Some things will take time, and some things will happen quickly.
“We lost a lot of time during the pandemic. We lost a lot of time squabbling.
“Now we have a new government that is actually focusing on delivering for the British people.”
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Mrs Badenoch, who was trade secretary up until her department was merged with the business brief yesterday, said she understood why many Britons felt Brexit was going badly.
“This is one of the reasons why I’m here,” she said. “We spent so much time having an argument about whether we should have left or stayed in – many years, an entire parliament – but we haven’t actually spent enough time talking about what we can do with having an independent trade policy.
“So I’m not surprised a lot of people are feeling ‘Bregret’ because there are many other economic background factors, that have nothing to do with Brexit, which can make people feel bleak.”
Economic growth no longer ‘Cinderella’ of government
The minister, who has been widely tipped as a future Tory leader, said she liked to see her department as being focused on growth.
The prime minister, she said, “has now created an economic growth department by merging business with trade and I’m here to deliver on that.”
Mrs Badenoch had advocated for the splitting of the Treasury into a fiscal and a growth department during her leadership bid last summer.
She said that was effectively what her department now embodies after Mr Sunak’s reshuffle.
“The Treasury is so focused on all of the other matters that the economic growth bit… just seemed to always be the Cinderella in the department,” she said.
“I thought it was probably better if somebody else was just doing this separately.”
Need for steel?
Asked whether the UK always needed a steel industry, she said: “Nothing is ever a given.”
But she needed to “sit down and look at what exactly has been going on with steel from a business perspective and an industry perspective,” she added.
Asked how the UK would respond to America’s Inflation Reduction Act, a multibillion-dollar scheme to subsidise green industry, Mrs Badenoch said it should be wary of introducing subsidies of its own.
“We are a leader in many areas,” she said. “We can’t always just look at what America is doing and say: ‘well America is doing this, so let’s do the same thing’.
“That is not strategic thinking – what you’re describing is just copying and pasting. That’s not a strategy.”
Business
iPhones sold in US will no longer come from China – as Apple reveals impact of Trump’s tariffs
Apple says devices sold in the US will no longer come from China, as the tech giant tries to mitigate the impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Most iPhones will be sourced from India instead, with iPads coming from Vietnam, to prevent dramatic price rises for American consumers.
Unveiling financial results from January to March, the company said the US president’s escalating trade war has had a limited impact on its performance so far.
However, Apple CEO Tim Cook believes the tariffs will add £677m in costs during the current quarter – assuming Trump’s policies don’t change.
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Revenue for the first three months of the year stood at £71.8bn, with earnings of £18.6bn also beating analyst expectations.
High demand for iPhones during this period may have been driven by US shoppers rushing to make purchases before the new tariffs came into force.
But the full impact of any panic buying will only emerge when Apple reports its results from April to June later in the year.
Apple’s reliance on Chinese factories to manufacture its iPhones meant the company was far more exposed to the impact of Trump’s trade war than others.
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After the president unveiled plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries – now largely paused for 90 days – Apple’s stock plunged by 23%, wiping out £582bn of value.
While its share price has recovered slightly, it remains 5% lower than before “Liberation Day”.
Growing tensions between Washington and Beijing are also having an impact on Apple’s sales in China, which fell 2.3% between January and March.
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Addressing the planned changes to manufacturing, Mr Cook added: “We have a complex supply chain. There’s always risk in the supply chain. What we learned some time ago was that having everything in one location had too much risk with it.”
Devices sold outside of the US will continue to be made in China.
Tesla’s board members have reportedly started a search for someone to replace Elon Musk as CEO.
Several executive search firms were approached to find a successor around a month ago, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But it added that the current status of the succession planning for the electric car-maker was not known.
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Tesla’s chair, Robyn Denholm, later reacted to the report by insisting that any suggestion of an active search was “absolutely false”.
She added that the board was highly confident in Musk’s ability to continue “executing on the exciting growth plan ahead”.
Musk’s net worth has plunged and Tesla stocks have fallen sharply amid a public backlash over his role in Donald Trump’s government. He owns just under 13% of Tesla stock and is the largest shareholder.
The world’s richest man has been leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he has overseen the firing of tens of thousands of government employees.
He has also supported far-right parties in Europe, which has led to protests against Musk and Tesla, which have seen its showrooms and charging stations vandalised across the US and Europe.
President Trump has labelled the vandals “terrorists”.
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It comes after Musk said the time he spends with DOGE would “drop significantly” from May and he will dedicate more time to running his companies, such as Tesla, SpaceX and X.
The board members met with Musk and asked him to announce publicly he would spend more time at Tesla, the report said.
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It was unclear if Musk, who is a member of the board, was aware of any attempts to identify a successor, or if his pledge to spend more time at Tesla had affected succession planning, it added.
On Wednesday, Mr Trump said Musk could be part of his administration for as long as he wants.
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“You’re invited to stay as long as you want,” Mr Trump said.
He said Musk had been “treated unfairly” for his role in helping Mr Trump slash the size of the federal government, adding: “You really have sacrificed a lot.”
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