By Akani Nkuna
United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has set out a five-point plan calling for open and balanced global trade to create an environment where businesses can thrive and make national economies more resilient to future economic shocks.
“We should promote open and balanced trade, taking steps to liberalise trade where we can. With new agreements that lower tariffs and barriers and return the stability and certainty that business needs. This is a real priority for my government,” he said.
Starmer was addressing delegates at the G20 Leaders’ Summit on Saturday in Johannesburg, where he said leaders should adopt measures that respond to fast-paced global shifts in economic growth, technological innovation and the impacts of climate change.
Starmer said that to curb these imbalances, deficit countries would need to halt unsustainable borrowing and instead prioritise investment and structural reforms to drive growth, while surplus countries should “reduce subsidies and other trade distortions as well as measures to boast domestic consumption”.
He emphasised the need to commit to “fiscal discipline” and targeted investments that address contemporary political challenges, particularly around clean energy production, and reiterated the importance of global cooperation in responding to such challenges and future energy shocks.
“We need to reform the international rules system so that it is fit for the modern world. We need to work together to ensure that organisations, like the WTO, are more able to be agile with new rules to meet modern challenges like environmental and digital trade and better and more flexible decision-making processes,” Starmer said.
The Prime Minister said this G20 Summit in particular was a cornerstone forum to spotlight and respond to the challenges facing Africa and other emerging economies, especially the growing debt burden and the financing gap for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
He said the summit should focus on promoting global growth through cooperation.
Starmer expressed optimism that the global community could overcome current crises, highlighting the devastating economic effects of the Russia-Ukraine war and expressing hope that the summit would help chart solutions.
“Fragility in the Middle East, rising threats of authoritarianism and fragmentation as well as Russia’s ongoing unjustified war in Ukraine. The shockwaves of that invasion are still reverberating through global markets today,” Starmer said.
“It has hit growth, driven up food and energy prices and deepened persistent imbalances and instability across the world.”
INSIDE POLITICS