Rich made the following statement at the KCC full council meeting after the recent US election:
Like many, I was disheartened to see the result of the US election. Aside from the fact that the re-election of President Trump is of huge concern to many (with more than half of the respondents to a YouGov poll yesterday believing that Trump’s second term will be bad for the UK), it’s likely his second term in power will have a number of direct and indirect impacts on the residents of Kent.
During Trump’s first term as president he not only tore up the rulebooks on ethics in politics, he tore up 74 different regulations on environmental protection, including measures to limit air and water pollution, as well as withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and lifting bans on oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Unsurprising for a man who once claimed that global warming was a hoax created by the Chinese to reduce the competitiveness of US manufacturing.
Of more direct impact to the UK, and to Kent, are his threats to impose tariffs on imports into the US, which the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) project would half UK economic growth over the next two years, whilst pushing up interest rates and inflation, measures which are only just recovering from the brief and disastrous Truss/Kwarteng government.
