| The apparently almost 100 Labour activists who planned to travel to the US to canvas for Kamala Harris have found themselves in Donald Trump and Elon Musk's crosshairs. Unlike the UK election this year, this one looks like it will be very close, but still these 100-ish campaigners are unlikely to tip the balance. Most Americans opening their door to British campaigners will probably be more interested in their visitor's views on the King, than on Kamala. The Trump campaign has lodged a legal complaint against Labour, alleging foreign interference in the election. Even if the case goes nowhere, it bodes badly for any future Trump-Starmer relationship, whatever the prime minister says. (Still, doesn't sound all too bad for Labour — fellow Readout writer Ailbhe Rea tells me that some of the campaigners she's spoken to are combining their door-knocking with holidays in the States.) In Westminster, the talk is of the 1992 US election when Tory aides were said to have tried to dig up dirt on Bill Clinton's student days at the University of Oxford — something that apparently did damage John Major's relationship with the president.  Trump during a campaign event in North Carolina Photographer: Cornell Watson/Bloomberg When I worked in Number 10, we said little on the prime minister's behalf during foreign elections for exactly this reason (what he chose to say was a different matter). So it's odd that this cohort at Number 10 didn't have the same electric fence around the US election, especially after Foreign Secretary David Lammy's valiant attempts to buddy up with Team Trump seemed to yield results, with Trump praising Starmer's election result when they met last month. The Starmer-Trump relationship, if it comes to pass, was always going to be odd: the meeting of a former head of the Crown Prosecution Service with a president who has criminal convictions would surely be box office stuff. But the possibility of another Trump presidency is already having major economic effects on the UK. In the last week Trump has made increasingly bellicose statements about global trade, which affect the UK a lot, given we're an open trading economy. After Trump told Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait last week that "tariff" is "the most beautiful word in the dictionary," there is a sense that the global economic landscape is darkening. Today there is another British delegation out traveling the globe in São Paolo, Brazil, where they're attending B20, the business equivalent of the G20, in an attempt to revitalize trade. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds is launching a new fund that he hopes will break down barriers faced by British exporters trying to access foreign markets. Because large trade deals are proving elusive, he is opting instead for smaller sector-specific deals.  Jonathan Reynolds last week Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg "A series of geopolitical events have complicated FTA talks between the UK and its peers. Relations with the United Arab Emirates, part of the Gulf Cooperation Council, have been strained by a series of diplomatic and business disputes with the UK, including the previous Conservative government's move to block its takeover of the UK's Telegraph newspaper," our reporters are told. As well as this, "earlier this year, the UK withdrew from FTA talks with Canada after they clashed over agricultural standards. Similar discussions with India were slowed by the political calendars in both countries and wrangling over the cross-border movement of workers." Trade could be about to get worse — something we discussed on the latest edition of Voternomics with Harvard professor of economics, Dani Rodrik. If Trump is re-elected, the UK may end up in the middle of a trade spat between the US and China. It feels like this new state of affairs has been digested by big banks better than the political class. Bloomberg Opinion's Paul Davies writes today that HSBC's decision this week to split itself into an Eastern and a Western bank is an acknowledgement of "geopolitical reality." "HSBC has maintained it saw no Chinese government influence behind Ping An's breakup campaign, but the political sensitivities of having two feet planted equally in Greater China and the UK are undeniable," he writes. They are indeed undeniable, as another round of Trump tariffs would be, too. Want this in your inbox each weekday? You can sign up here. | 
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