Liz Truss is expected to deliver a speech in the US on Wednesday to renew her advocacy of low taxes and question whether western nations are “match fit to take on China”.
Delivering the Margaret Thatcher Lecture for the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, she will suggest the 1980s “Anglo-American” economic model of increased privatisation and limited government is being “strangled into stagnation” in the latest leg of her comeback to the political limelight.
Britain's shortest-serving prime minister will urge the UK and the US to better promote “free markets” and “free speech” in the face of the “threat” from authoritarian regimes.
The Tory backbencher, whose tenure in Downing Street lasted only 49 days, beat Rishi Sunak in last summer’s Tory leadership contest running on a tax-cutting agenda before her disastrous economic plans sunk her premiership, handing him the keys to No 10.
“It was Anglo-American individualism that made the world prosperous … Low taxes, limited government and private enterprise were what won the Cold War. I worry that we are now seeing this model strangled into stagnation,” Ms Truss is expected to say.
“And we have to ask ourselves: are we still match fit to take on China and to take on the whole concept of state capitalism?”
“We’ve allowed our opponents to own our institutions, crowd our campuses and fill our airwaves,” she will add.
“Not long ago the United States and the United Kingdom were absolute bastions of free enterprise, free markets and free speech … But what we’ve seen now is self-flagellation — lashing out at the very things that made us great.”
Liz Truss through the years — in pictures
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British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation, outside No 10 Downing Street, London. AP -
Liz Truss during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons in London, addressing Parliament for the first time since abandoning her disastrous tax-slashing economic policies. AFP -
Liz Truss walks off stage after delivering her keynote speech at the Conservative Party annual conference at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham in October. PA -
Liz Truss meets US President Joe Biden during the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. AP -
King Charles during his first audience in September with Ms Truss at Buckingham Palace, London, following the death of Queen Elizabeth. Getty Images -
Labour leader Keir Starmer and Liz Truss pay their respects after the service and procession for the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II into Westminster Hall, London, in September. PA -
Ms Truss is welcomed by staff in Downing Street as she enters the famous prime ministerial offices for the first time in September. Photo: Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street -
Queen Elizabeth II greets the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party, Ms Truss, at Balmoral Castle in Scotland in September. The queen invited Ms Truss to become prime minister and form a new government. Getty Images -
New Conservative Party leader and Britain's Prime Minister-elect Liz Truss delivers a speech after being announced the winner of the Tory Party leadership contest in central London on September 5, 2022. Ms Truss is the UK's third female prime minister following Theresa May and Margaret Thatcher. AFP -
Liz Truss meets supporters as she arrives to attend a Conservative leadership election hustings at the NEC, Birmingham, in August. AP -
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss take part in the BBC Leadership debate at Victoria Hall in Hanley in July. Getty Images -
Liz Truss playing pool during a visit to the Onside Future Youth Zone in London in August 2022. PA -
Boris Johnson and Ms Truss arriving for an extraordinary summit at Nato headquarters in Brussels, in March 2022. AFP -
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ms Truss arrive for talks in Moscow in February 2022. AP -
Ms Truss in Red Square during a visit to Moscow in February 2022. Photo: No. 10, Downing Street -
Ms Truss meeting European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic (not seen) for talks in central London on the Northern Ireland Protocol on 11th February 2022. PA -
Ms Truss with Marise Payne, the Australian minister of foreign affairs, at Government House in Sydney, Australia, in January 2022. Photo: No. 10, Downing Street -
Liz Truss hosts Vice President of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic at Chevening House in January 2022 to discuss the Northern Ireland protocol. Photo: No. 10, Downing Street -
Ms Truss visits British troops in Estonia as they operate alongside other Nato troops in Tapa in November 2021. Photo: No. 10, Downing Street -
Liz Truss walks through the old town in Tallinn, Estonia, in November 2021. Photo: No. 10, Downing Street -
Ms Truss greeting Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, in November 2021. PA -
Ms Truss at the Red Fort in New Delhi during a trip to India in October 2021. Photo: No. 10, Downing Street -
The British foreign secretary on the Plaza de la Constitucion in Mexico City, during a trip to Mexico in September 2021. Photo: No. 10, Downing Street -
Queen Elizabeth II greeting Ms Truss at a reception for international business and investment leaders at Windsor Castle in October 2021. PA -
Liz Truss with Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, in New York, in September 2021. Photo: No. 10, Downing Street -
Ms Truss on a morning jog over Brooklyn Bridge in New York in September 2021. Photo: No. 10, Downing Street -
Former Chancellor Philip Hammond, centre, holding his red ministerial box outside 11, Downing Street, flanked by Treasury colleagues Ms Truss and Mel Stride in October 2018. PA -
Ms Truss, then secretary of state for justice, being escorted around HMP Brixton by prison governor David Bamford in November 2016. PA -
Ms Truss as she became the first woman ever to hold the role of Lord Chancellor, arriving at the Royal Courts of Justice before being installed in July 2016. PA -
In April 2016, the former environment secretary Liz Truss listening to former chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne (not seen) during his speech at the National Composites Centre in Bristol. PA -
When she was environment minister, Ms Truss visited the bridge over the River Wharfe in Tadcaster, which collapsed after heavy flooding in December 2015. Getty Images -
Addressing the Conservative party conference in Birmingham in 2014 when she was secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs. Getty Images -
Mr Truss on the Sawnnington Farm to Fork stand at the Norfolk Food Festival at the Houses Of Parliament in October 2011. PA -
Conservative Parliamentary candidate for South-West Norfolk Elizabeth Truss, while canvassing in the village of West Walton during the 2010 General Election campaign. PA -
The former Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve, centre, speaking at the launch Reform's Lawful Society report on the nature of crime and the incentives in the criminal justice system while Ms Truss looks on, in September 2008. PA -
Former Conservative Leader William Hague meeting conservative candidate for Calder valley Ms Truss, during the General Election Campaign for 2005. PA
The speech will accuse Western leaders meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping of displaying “weakness”.
It comes days after French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met the Chinese leader in a show of European unity in dealings with Beijing.
Ms Truss will also accuse a “cartel of complacency” of advocating for higher taxes as she takes aim at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development global economic body.
“Putin and Xi have made it clear they are allies against Western capitalism. That is why Western leaders visiting President Xi to ask for his support in ending the war is a mistake. And it is a sign of weakness,” Ms Truss is expected to say.
She is due to urge conservatives around the globe to “mount a fightback for freedom” and “get real about the threat from authoritarian regimes and their unwitting allies in the anti-growth movement”.
“Not content with high taxes in their own countries, we now see governments seeking to agree high taxes around the free world.
“I’m talking about the OECD minimum tax agreement, which will stop countries lowering things like corporation tax and becoming more competitive,” she is expected to say.
The speech comes as the Prime Minister meets US President Joe Biden in Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
Ms Truss’s recent comments on China, described as “hawkish” by one ally, could stoke divisions within the Tory Party.
Many are more eager to hastily cut taxes than Mr Sunak and hold a more aggressive stance on China.
Ms Truss had been expected to officially re-designate China as a “threat” in official speak instead of a “systemic competitor” during her leadership, while Mr Sunak has described the nation as a “systemic challenge” rather than a threat.
