What do Andy Burnham’s priorities mean for the UK’s trade strategy?

A little over a year after Keir Starmer’s government published the UK’s Trade Strategy, Britain has a new Prime Minister with a new set of priorities.

On coming to office, Andy Burnham set out a series of aims and priorities for his government including the aspiration of “reindustrialising Britain and “rewiring the state”, devolving greater power to local areas.^[1] He has also stated he wants to “safeguard sovereign manufacturing and production capability in critical sectors” and put “more world-beating British manufacturers and service providers at the frontier of new technology and exporting to the world”. So how do these aspirations sit alongside the UK’s existing approaches to trade policy?

Trade policy may have received less of a direct spotlight than domestic issues in the first weeks of the Burnham government, but the new Prime Minister’s domestic priorities are intrinsically linked to industrial strategy and building economic resilience in today’s volatile geopolitical environment.

We examine the UK’s Trade Strategy, published in June 2025, to assess the extent that it can support the new Prime Minister’s agenda and where trade policy might go in a different direction.

Economic security and reindustrialisation

One of the central themes of Andy Burnham’s early statements has been reindustrialisation for strategically important sectors – and similarly, one of the Trade Strategy’s core pillars is support for priority industrial sectors, such as steel and energy. The approach set out in the strategy is to use a more “assertive trade defence toolkit”^[2] to shield domestic producers from unfair market distortions.

The expanded use of trade remedies promised in the strategy has been delivered in a targeted way to provide support for UK manufacturers. In 2025-26, the Trade Remedies Authority reported a 47% increase in completed cases, launching 12 new anti-dumping cases and 7 subsidy cases.^[3] In July 2026, the UK introduced new steel trade measures which cut tariff-free quota volumes by 51% and increased the out-of-quota tariff for steel imports from 25% to 50% - representing a significant intervention to protect domestic industry.

Separately, in response to a consultation on reforms to the National Security and Investment Act, the government committed to amending the scope of the regulation, narrowing the scope of mandatory notifications. The latest statistics show notification notices under the regime rose by 16% over the last year, with 95.6% of transactions cleared to proceed. The reforms indicate the direction of travel is to a more targeted regime allowing the government to focus on more strategically important investment risks.^[4]

Andy Burnham has also promised to update public procurement rules to build “resilience in places across the country in an increasingly uncertain world”. On 5 August, the government announced those changes in a press release, doubling the weighting given to benefits for local communities when tenders are assessed, from 10% to 20%,^[5] a change that is intended to ensure British businesses are in a “better position to win contracts”.^[6] This approach is entirely in keeping with the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, published in June 2025, which, like the Trade Strategy, was published under Jonathan Reynolds’ previous stint as Trade Secretary. It set out sector plans, investment support and protection against unfair competition for eight priority sectors including clean energy, advanced manufacturing, defence and life sciences.

Devolution and regional delivery

Andy Burnham’s recent public statements have tended to centre on devolution - transferring greater fiscal and political power out of Whitehall and into city regions and devolved nations. Much of the focus so far has been on domestic themes but this agenda could well bring the trade strategy’s regional delivery ambitions into the spotlight.

The UK’s Trade Strategy commits the government to working more closely with devolved administrations and local business groups to ensure the benefits of international trade are distributed more evenly across the UK. More than a year on, there is little concrete evidence to point to significant progress on this commitment. Most of the government’s progress on this comes from commitments set out in the Modern Industrial Strategy, including enhanced regional support for attracting investment.^[7]

Andy Burnham’s ambitions on regional delivery go further than those in the strategy, promising to bring about “the biggest rebalancing of power” the UK has seen, including giving local mayors a share of income tax receipts from 2028.^[8]  

Trade policy levers offer practical ways to support regional growth. Trade promotion and export finance could be targeted more deliberately to regional clusters and businesses outside London and the South East, helping them to export, scale up and attract investment. Freeports and investment zones provide another route, using tax and regulatory incentives to encourage economic activity in areas where growth is a priority. Together these tools could help translate Burnham’s devolution agenda into a more geographically targeted approach to trade policy.

Improving the mechanics of trade

The new Prime Minister has not yet spoken about the role of customs modernisation and trade finance in delivering his priorities, but these trade policy levers form one of the largest components of the Trade Strategy and align closely with his aims. 

The strategy committed to modernising the UK customs regime, aiming to “cut through red tape at the border by harnessing the benefits of digitalisation”. A call for evidence explored greater use of supply chain data and artificial intelligence to make the UK border more modern and resilient.^[9] This points to an ambitious vision for reform, although the plans remain at an early stage.

On trade finance, delivery has gone further. UK Export Finance (UKEF) expanded its financing capacity by £20 billion to £80 billion. In 2025-26, UKEF provided £11.2 billion of new loans, insurance and guarantees to businesses and allocated £50 billion to support defence exports.^[10]

On SMEs specifically, UKEF worked with five banks to launch a new £11 billion lending package. However, its latest annual report shows UKEF supported 616 SMEs in the year, with only 291 directly receiving a UKEF product. These figures suggest the ambition to make export finance more visible and accessible to smaller exporters remains a work in progress.

UK trade agreements

The trade strategy pointed towards nimble, sector-specific tools, such as mutual recognition agreements, being used as the main source of future market access gains, rather than more comprehensive free trade agreements (FTAs).

Labour’s 2024 manifesto had already committed to this approach, promising to negotiate standalone sector deals, such as digital trade agreements, alongside new FTAs. As most of the UK’s priority FTA opportunities (e.g. India and CPTPP) are now at implementation stage, we expect the new government to continue the move away from comprehensive FTA negotiations.

The EU “reset” follows a similar pattern, with negotiations ongoing on a series of smaller agreements including a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement, alignment of the UK and EU’s emission trading systems, a youth mobility scheme and UK participation in the EU electricity market. A second UK-EU summit (postponed from July 2026) is expected to take place this autumn, potentially resulting in the finalisation of the current negotiations and setting out future priorities. Read our previous analysis of the EU reset here.  

The new Prime Minister is known to be a strong supporter of a closer UK-EU trade relationship, recently stating that the UK needs to be “in a position where we fix things in an amicable way that will add percentage points to our growth”.^[11] It is therefore possible that the breadth and speed of negotiations could accelerate, with the UK being “bolder in terms of getting closer”^[12] to the EU. Separately, Hamish Falconer, the new Minister for European Relations, has said there is “room to be ambitious”^[13] on the UK-EU relationship.

The extent to which ambition can be translated into tangible changes in the UK-EU relationship will depend largely on the ability to make progress on outstanding issues. Negotiations on the UK’s involvement in the EU’s SAFE defence fund ended without agreement, while differences over the proposed scope and terms of a youth mobility scheme have delayed progress. The final shape of the EU’s Industrial Accelerator Act (its ‘Made in Europe’ strategy) and it impact on UK businesses may also set the tone for how ambitious and far-reaching future cooperation will be.

What comes next?

The UK’s Trade Strategy provides a framework from which to implement many of the Burnham government’s priorities. To match the new Prime Minister’s ambitions, certain elements of the strategy may need to be revisited and expanded on, such as a more comprehensive approach to delivering the benefits of trade across the regions. The strategy’s commitments on customs modernisation and support for SMEs may also need to move from early-stage plans to firmer delivery.

However, the Trade Strategy’s core framework is clearly a useful tool for the new government and already well aligned with the early priorities set out by the Prime Minister. Small revisions and faster delivery are needed to support his emphasis on reindustrialisation and regional growth, but this represents a refocus rather than a rewrite.

^[1] Government’s political and legislative agenda, House of Lords Library, 20 August 2026

^[2] The UK Trade Strategy, 25 July 2025

^[3] Annual Report and Accounts 2025-26, Trade Remedies Authority

^[4] National Security and Investment Act (Notifiable Acquisition) (Specification of Qualifying Entities) Regulations 2021 - Consultation response

^[5] Government orders that public spending must back British jobs and skills in every postcode

^[6] Andy Burnham’s speech in full as he promises to give the UK ‘new direction’, Manchester Evening News, 29 June 2026

^[7] The UK’s submission to the World Trade Organization as part of the Trade Policy Review, November 2025.

^[8] Rewiring the State – Cabinet Statement, 31 July 2026

^[9] Customs Modernisation, open call for evidence, 23 June, 2026

^[10] UKEF Impact Report 2025/26

^[11] Andy Burnham pledges to ‘take pressure off’ business ahead of October Budget

^[12] PM meeting with President Costa of the European Council: 23 August 2026

^[13] Labour seeking ‘deeper relationship’ with EU under Burnham, new minister says, The Guardian, 9 August 2026