Of Beth Rigbypolitical editor

The scenarios range from trade wars across the board to milder protectionist measures, which the UK has already lived with under the Biden administration.

“It’s hard to say what it will mean for us now,” a senior government official told me. “There will be trade implications, but it’s not clear whether it will be flat tariffs that will trigger a trade war with China where we all feel the pain, or slightly protectionist stuff, which the US has been doing for years.

“In the nightmare trade scenario of huge tariffs … if this happens, it will make Brexit feel like a paper cut.”

For the UK, outside the EU and in dealings with China and the US, the tariffs could be particularly acute and cause domestic difficulties.

As a large trading nation, tariffs would have large inflationary effects on goods.

“It would have a big impact on how we have to deal with China and Europe and it would create retaliatory trade wars,” said a person familiar with the planning of the scenario.

“They force us to choose. Are we facing America more, are we facing China more?

“We are exposed as a trading nation because we are relatively few between the EU bloc, China and the US. So we’re going to be disproportionately affected and we don’t have big friends to hang out with, so we’re going to be tight. “

It is also unclear how the flat tariffs relate to the much-vaunted post-Brexit trade deal, which Trump was once keen on but President Joe Biden was not.

The Labor government is currently unclear how this might be revised, or whether it wants it to be, both in light of Trump’s protectionism and Labour’s red lines on opening up the NHS to private pharmaceuticals or agriculture to imports of modified products genetic.

The prospect of punitive tariffs forcing the UK to eat is the exact opposite of what the government wants.

However, could there be a middle ground?

A government official says there could be room for security or technology cooperation, which is different from a full trade deal.

There is some hope that Trump might be open to such ties.