Birmingham Business Leaders react to a second Trump administration

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Birmingham business leaders gathered at the city’s Chamber as the results for the US Presidential Election were coming in. Here are some of their thoughts on how the business community should react to a second Trump administration.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Kurt Jacobs, the editor of Midlands Business Insider, and now I'm at Birmingham

00:16Chamber as the final results for the US election are coming in and a Trump victory seems inevitable.

00:23I've spoken to some of the business leaders here to get their views on what's going to

00:27happen and how businesses need to react to this victory.

00:31I'm Deb Leary, I'm CEO of Forensic Pathways and I'm also Honorary Consul for Mexico for

00:36the West Midlands, so I was really interested to see obviously to see how the election was

00:41going to pan out. I have to say I'm not surprised at the results in terms of who's won, but

00:48I am surprised at the scale of the win, so that was a surprise to me. And I think what's

00:55going to be interesting over the next 100 days or so is to see how much the rhetoric

00:59that has gone on during the election actually pans out into reality, particularly around

01:04tariffs for countries like Mexico and for China, and for the rest of the world actually.

01:10So we've got to separate the rhetoric of election politics from reality. But I think it's an

01:18opportunity, there's always opportunity. I think the key things we've got to focus on,

01:23particularly from a Birmingham point of view, is to work hard at connecting and building

01:28those links. And from a wider national point of view, from my perspective, Keir Starmer's

01:34got to get on it like a bonnet and actually start to build those links now. We've got

01:38to be bold and we've got to put out to the world and to America that the UK is open for business.

01:45Hi, I'm Angelo Teggini from AJ Gallagher's. I've just been lucky enough to attend the

01:50event, the US Breakfast, and we've just obviously been privy to the result where Donald Trump

01:55now, subject to final confirmation, is going to be the new president of the United States.

01:59I've just got one clear thing that I want us to do. The UK government needs to be out

02:03there embracing the new Trump administration. There have been one or two difficulties related

02:07to Sir Keir Starmer and supporters of Donald Trump. Very important that he now supports

02:11UK business, gets out there and helps SMEs to trade within the United States. That would

02:16be my one message to the UK government based on this result.

02:19So I'm Elizabeth Lewis-Jones. I'm chief exec and founder of an integrated marketing company

02:26called Liquid, based here in Birmingham. And one of the things that I am concerned about

02:33is obviously free trade agreements and how Trump very much looks at America first. And

02:39I think that what we're going to see is an increase in tariffs of goods going into America.

02:44And then we'll see, as we did last time, a retaliation, particularly from the EU, of

02:51tariffs being put on American goods coming into the EU. Now, I know that we sit outside

02:57the EU, but a lot of goods go into the EU first before they come to the UK. And also

03:01because we don't have a free trade agreement with the US, we only have memorandums of understandings

03:06with particular states, then that is also going to be quite a challenge.

03:14For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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