Revealed: How Trump and America put the squeeze on Scottish jobs

The most recent example came this week at Harbour Energy in Aberdeen. It’s one of Britain’s largest oil and gas producers.

Established by an American financier, run by an American CEO, and largely owned by US shareholders, Harbour Energy doesn’t like the British government’s tax regime so it’s cutting 600 jobs.

It announced 350 jobs losses under the Conservatives in 2023. Now, 250 more are going.

A series of US-owned companies have recently put Scottish workers on the chopping block. Amazon closed its Gourock centre with the loss of 300 jobs. Enermech in Aberdeen sacked 120 people after its take-over by the US-based private equity giant Carlyle last year. In Glasgow, dozens of jobs were lost at ISG, owned by Texan billionaire William Harrison.

To put the Harbour Energy job losses in context, in its most recent financial results, the company - with bases in Norway, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, North Africa and Southeast Asia - reported around $6billion in revenues alongside $4billion in earnings before interest, depreciation and other costs like exploration.

“All these redundancies mean tragedy for Scottish families. They also neatly encapsulate how Britain has become America’s servant”, according to Angus Hanton. He says Britain has been strip-mined of money and assets by America, our tax base has been cheated by American companies, and when Washington says jump the British government asks ‘how high?’.

Hanton, whose roots are Scottish, is an economist, entrepreneur and co-founder of the think-tank Intergenerational Foundation, which promotes young people’s interests. For years, he’s investigated how much power America wields over Britain.

Angus Hanton, economist and entrepreneur and author of Vassal State: How America Runs Britain

What better time to take stock of the relationship than now, as the long-awaited US-UK trade deal is signed. Hanton says it simply reinforces “British submission”.

Britain was in state of servitude to America long before Trump’s return, says Hanton, regardless of whether Washington was controlled by Republican or Democratic presidents.

Until Trump’s second presidency, though, Britain could hide from that harsh reality behind “the fig leaf of the Special Relationship”.

After Trump’s return, however, “the fig leaf was torn away. The naked truth is there for all to see, if only we’d look”.

Likewise, it makes little difference whether Britain is ruled by Conservatives or Labour, as we’re fleeced by America either way.

POWER

Hanton’s views are like an acid bath, forcing Brits to confront the grimmest of facts about the country’s true place in the world. His new book Vassal State: How America Runs Britain, is essential reading for any Brit who wants to understand the power the US holds over us.

First some facts and figures. There are more than 1300 US multinationals in Britain with annual sales of $836billion. That money goes to America. It’s the equivalent of £22,000 per UK household. US corporate revenues here are roughly the same as combined revenues from France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Hanton says Britain has been “singled out as a target for takeovers. America has more foreign investment here that in any other country - 30% of American business assets outside the US are here”.

America has “made Britain a US colony through trade rather than military takeover”. In 2022-23 alone US ownership in Britain increased by £90billion. When US-owned companies fail here, like Southern Cross care homes, British taxpayers pick up the tab.

Don’t be fooled into thinking those multinationals are creating jobs. Mostly, they’ve bought up existing UK companies. They haven’t built factories or hired new staff. Indeed, they often make staff redundant, according to Hanton.

American firms “dodge tax at scale. The result is British citizens pay more. US corporate profits for Britain run at about $100billion annually on which they pay roughly $10billion in tax.

“So, the shortfall from the official company tax rate of 25% is $15billion dollars, equivalent to over £11billion, about £380 per UK household.

“But it’s worse than that: these figures are for American companies which actually trade in Britain - there are also many which sell through Ireland and Luxembourg, mostly avoiding UK corporate tax altogether. These included the Big Five tech giants - Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google.”

Hanton says “US companies have made tax avoidance a competitive sport. It’s an admission of failure that we collect so little tax from them”. US tech companies here use our tax system to subsidise their research and development. “They reduce their tax very significantly this way. It’s just another way we subsidise them.”

In the last five years, “the Westminster government allowed US takeovers of three key defence companies: Cobham, Meggitt and Ultra. In view of America’s new position on Ukraine and Nato, these sales now look like a very short-sighted failure to defend British interests”.

Hanton says there’s been a “car-boot sale of British companies, and Scottish companies are particularly vulnerable to US raiders”. Scotland’s housebuilding giant Miller Homes was bought over by the US private equity company Apollo in 2022.

Aggreko, the Scottish generator company, has been co-owned by an American private equity company since 2021. Many North Sea companies are American-dominated, as are their suppliers.

GLASGOW

BP has 40% American shareholders. One US company, Elliott Investment, holds more than 5% of BP shares. “It should be called Anglo-American Petroleum, not British Petroleum,” Hanton adds. The clout of American shareholders resulted in BP easing off on “green strategies and moving back towards ‘drill, baby, drill’. It’s illustrative of the power of American money”.

In March, it was announced that the San Francisco 49ers would take a majority stake in Rangers. Americans already control 50% of England’s Premier League.

“Also in March, it was announced that the US private equity group Apollo was taking over Aberdeenshire-based OEG Offshore. The following month, April 2025, it was announced that a Texas company is buying up Stirling-based Allen Gordon, a water and energy consultancy.

“This week it was announced that San Francisco-based DoorDash is swallowing up Deliveroo. So an American company will get a bite out of every Deliveroo delivery.”

Other recent take-overs of British companies underway include Thames Water being bought by New York-based KKR, and Northern Irish FD Technologies being bought by a Massachusetts private equity company.

The Scottish company Wolfson Microelectronics was taken over by the American semiconductor giant Cirrus Logic in 2014.

Two million British workers are employed by US firms - making their shareholders rich. In Spain, Americans employ 200,000, in France 350,000, and in Germany 450,000 - that’s “less than a quarter as many as in Britain, but in a larger country. It demonstrates the sheer scale of American involvement in Britain’s economy”.

American companies, Hanton explains, are mostly anti-union so pay and conditions suffer. British workers are also first to go if US companies need to make savings.

Additionally, Britain loses the “hometown advantage”. Hanton explains: “Wherever a headquarters is based gets the highest-paid jobs and reaps indirect benefits. In America, you see this with how west coast cities benefited from being HQs for Apple, Microsoft and Nike.”

The jobs which US companies do create here “are often low-paid and low-skilled, like warehouse stock-pickers or delivery drivers. These jobs are insecure and highly vulnerable to replacement by robots and self-driving vehicles”.

American business is increasingly deciding what we buy, what we pay and how we work, Hanton says. UK government contracts - from the MoD to the NHS - increasingly go to American companies or their UK distributors. In the last five years, that accounted for £56billion, almost 27% of government contracts, and more than US corporations pay in UK corporation tax.

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STARK

Half the CEOs of FTSE 100 companies in Britain are American, American-educated or have worked for American companies, and 30% of the shares of all UK listed companies are owned by US investors. Most of the last nine British chancellors took work with American firms after retirement.

As a measure of just how weak Britain’s economy is compared to America, the largest US firm Microsoft, capitalised at £2.5trillion, is worth more than the combined value of the UK’s biggest 350 companies.

“The starkest illustration is that Britain is roughly as poor as Mississippi, the poorest US state. Exclude London, and we’re significantly poorer than any US state.”

Microsoft’s office space in Redmond, Washington, exceeds all the office space in Glasgow.

It’s evident why Hanton sees Brexit’s ‘take back control’ mantra as absurd.

Although there’s been much talk of Donald Trump threatening to make Canada the “51st state”, Britain is in a worse position. “We’re more like Puerto Rico.” The Caribbean island is an effective American colony. “We’d almost be better as the 51st state,” Hanton adds.

One of Barack Obama’s senior advisers, Jeremy Shapiro, admitted that the so-called Special Relationship “was never really something that was very important to the United State”. Hanton notes that Shapiro said: “From my perspective it was very important for us to mention the special relationship in every press conference that we had when the UK people were here … but really we laughed about it behind the scenes.”

Hanton adds: “American companies own far more of Britain than is generally recognised. That has significant consequences in terms of loss of control, both politically and regulatory. Few realise to what extent we’ve become a subservient state to America. We’re not just dependent on them for defence, but subject to their will in most areas of our political and economic lives.”

In terms of American control, Britain is “the worst of the large nations, because we’ve mostly not recognised the problem. We’ve seen America as friendly, so we’ve encouraged takeovers”.

The best guesstimate for all American interests in Britain runs to $2trillion - including indirect investment via US companies operating from tax havens. That’s a third of all American foreign investment, far bigger than similar investments in Canada, Mexico or other European nations.

The amount of money extracted from Britain is “equivalent to more than a quarter of the whole of Britain’s GDP”.

DOMINATED

We buy American goods and services without even thinking about it. Use Zoom? “Your monthly subscription goes straight to California.” Your iPhone. American. Your monthly subscription to cloud services. American.

When you pay with Mastercard or Visa, “a small but significant part of that payment goes as a royalty” to American firms. Bought apps from the Apple App Store? 30% goes to America.

Bought through eBay or Amazon? A cut goes to America. Booked an AirBnB? A cut goes to America. “They own the pipes and bridges of our economy. We must pay to cross the bridge or use the pipe. It’s entrenched. Many companies can’t do business without paying Americans for the privilege.”

Our software subscriptions are “monthly treadmills” of payments to US firms. The big brands we buy are American-dominated: Kelloggs, Proctor and Gamble, Colgate Palmolive, Mars Corporation, and Coca-Cola.

Many of the brands we think of as British are American. Pedigree Chum is American-owned, so is Cadbury’s and Weetabix. Morrisons is American, owned by a private equity company. Costa Coffee was bought by Coca-Cola. Cafe Nero is American-owned. Clearly, Americans dominate our fast-food.

Streaming movies? Then you’re using American firms like Netflix, Disney or Amazon.

Even Britain’s famed first - creating the Covid vaccine - had American fingers in the till. “Two-thirds of the final expenditure went on American suppliers. That’s true of many NHS supplies. It’s an astonishing litany. It’s an iceberg, all under the surface. But when you pull it all together, it’s shocking.”

Forget the idea that American takeovers and investment mean British jobs. “Many of the takeovers were of existing profitable companies and no new jobs were created. Often, jobs were lost as the Americans made the companies more ‘efficient’.”

Worthwhile foreign investment would follow the Japanese model in Sunderland where Nissan “created new factories which meant new skilled jobs”.

Hanton blames the British government for not differentiating between the two types of investment.

US private equity firms have driven many of the takeovers. “Their focus isn’t on creating new jobs, it’s on buying existing businesses with predictable, recurring incomes, gearing them up with borrowing, and taking borrowed money out of the companies.”

Many “below the radar” UK companies have been bought by America, like the waste disposal firms Viridor and Biffa. Big names get gobbled up too like Waterstones.

So, the jobs argument is “weak”, but the the idea that US firms help build Britain’s tax base is “weaker still. They don’t generate tax, they reduce our tax base”. If a UK company which pays 25% corporation tax is bought up, the shift to American ownership can see its tax payments fall below 10%, due to exploitation of tax havens. That means Brits end up paying more tax to keep the nation’s coffers afloat.

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POODLE

“It’s a very transactional, very one-directional relationship. They want to make us feel special, they’re no fools,” Hanton says. Britain’s belief in the special relationship means when it comes to US foreign policy “we follow, right or wrong. That’s very advantageous to America as it gives them cover. We’re their most loyal poodle. We’ve seen that from the Iraq War onwards. We should be independent.

“I use the term ‘vassal state’ as we’re a servant, we’re working for them, at their beck and call. The special relationship has turned into an abusive relationship. We’re a supplicant.”

He points out that American elites are buying up British artworks wholesale - “stripping us of our treasures” - and purchasing huge swathes of Scottish land. Some of Scotland’s biggest landowners are American.

Hanton adds: “British policy-makers are aware of all this but don’t want to highlight it. That doesn’t reflect well on them.” Additionally, the government refuses to measure the extent of American control of our economy.

“They’ve no idea, they don’t keep figures, yet it’s effectively colonisation,” Hanton says. “They wilfully refuse to do anything about this. If Britain were a business, the CEO would want to know what percentage of influence a rival had over them.”

American influence has been growing since Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation programme began, and really took off after the 2008 financial crash, when the Conservative government made US takeovers “attractive from a tax and regulation perspective. They regarded the Americans as saviours and welcomed them”.

Boris Johnson’s Office for Investment - a joint unit of the Treasury, Department of Business and Trade, and Number 10 - effectively became “the department for selling off Britain”. The new Labour government has been no different, Hanton says.

He adds: “Thatcher would be horrified by the extent of American ownership. When she was in power, Americans owned 3% of the typical FTSE 100 company. Now they own 30%.

“She introduced the culture, but I’m not blaming her. It’s gone much further than she would have wanted. We allow them to buy our firms, but they protect their firms from foreign acquisition and always have, just as they protect their government contracts from going to foreign companies and always have.”

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon welcomes Prime Minister Boris Johnson 

CONSPIRACY

The Buy American Act has existed since 1933. “We don’t have an equivalent,” Hanton says. British political leaders are culturally “hypnotised” by America. Rishi Sunak famously had a Green card, “the first step to becoming an American citizen”. Often the first journey an ex-PM makes is to America for speaking tours.

The Big Five US private equity firms - Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, Apollo and Bain - “represent 70-80% of private equity in Britain. There’s a conspiracy of silence about this. They’re stripping our assets but when I speak to politicians they don’t think it’s their job to do anything about it.

“The British have become inclined to shrug our shoulders and say ‘well, we’re a nation in decline’, but we don’t need to be in decline. We certainly don’t need to be owned by others to this extent.”

Other nations aren’t so “submissive”. Australia has “two 800lb gorillas in its back-yard in the shape of America and China, and resists both. They don’t want to be dependent or servile.

“Equally, there’s much more determination in France and Germany to resist America. They’re much more likely to promote their own tech companies, and prevent takeovers. Government regulation is part of it, but it’s also cultural. French and German companies are embedded in their communities, so selling out to American corporations would be unthinkable for many.”

The British tax system makes selling out to America far too tempting for UK entrepreneurs. A friend of Hanton’s owned a successful tech company which he sold to Americans for £12million. If he’d carried on trading his profits would have been taxed at 50%. Lower capital gains tax meant he made more money selling the firm.

A bigger example of a similar sell-off is DeepMind, an acclaimed British artificial intelligence start-up, that was bought by Google. “It need not have been taken over at all,” says Hanton. “We need structures that don’t encourage selling off homegrown businesses.

“Brits are incentivised to sell-out. That’s a policy decision. We could change that and charge capital gains at the same rate as income. You don’t get that sort of tax concession in other countries for selling out.”

Sometimes Britain’s government just throws UK companies to the lions, opting for US contracts. The cloud computing firm DataCentred planned to create 200 skilled jobs in Manchester. It had contracts with HMRC. However, “without consultation or concern”, HMRC switched to Amazon Web Services. DataCentred went bust. “We should be using procurement policies to promote British businesses.”

We also see brain-drain to America. Just as the central belt plunders talent from the highlands, or London plunders talent from Scotland, America lures away “talented young Brits. Many of our best scientists are employed by American companies. It’s another aspect of the impoverishment of Britain by America. For a long time, we’ve taken talent from all over the world, now we’re getting a taste of our own medicine.”

NHS

When the NHS uses private companies, they’re mostly American-dominated. America is also involved in UK privately-owned prisons. The NHS depends on “huge amounts of American supplies”. Inventions are gobbled up by American investors. Ultrasound was created by a Scottish doctor inspired by work in Glasgow’s shipyards. Today, America’s GE Healthcare is the market leader in supplying ultrasound to the NHS.

American domination highlights Brexit’s folly. “We took back control from Europe and handed it to America. During the Brexit debate we were looking in the wrong direction. The Brexit gang described Britain as a vassal of Europe. They were only half-right. We’re a vassal of America.”

Quitting Europe left us exposed to the power of American Big Tech. “Brussels is very good at regulating American tech firms and challenging their monopolies. We’ve distanced ourselves from that and put ourselves far down the food chain.”

Even our national debate is dominated by American tech given the influence of Elon Musk’s X and Facebook. “The profits go to America, the algorithm can be tweaked there - we’ve no control.”

US corporate lobbyists wield huge influence over British politics, as do American think-tanks. The Heritage Foundation is closely linked to Liz Truss. “Americans have been incredibly successful at wielding soft power,” Hanton adds. “Their ideas are embedded in our society.”

It makes no difference if Democrats or Republicans are in charge in terms of the exploitation of Britain’s economy. Both have an “imperial” agenda. Hanton warned long before Trump took power that if America ever chose to “break with the values shared between our two countries”, Britain would be in trouble.

In terms of foreign and trade policy, when America says jump, Britain jumps. We banned China’s telecoms giant Huawei from the 5G network following pressure from America. “And guess what?” Hanton says. “The alternative supplier was the American corporation Cisco.”

Since Keir Starmer took power he’s “gone cap in hand” to Trump. That has made more Brits realise, says Hanton, “that what I’m saying is true. In the last few years, it’s become clear that our vassalage is complete. The pretence that we’re America’s junior partner has been replaced by the realisation that we work for them, we do what they want and we’re subject to them. All Trump has done is rip the fig-leaf away. We’ve consented to this imperialism and it has cost us jobs and wealth.”

Starmer didn’t have to behave so obsequiously. Hanton points to Canada’s robust response towards Trump. “We can’t turn completely away from America, but we can turn sideways.”

TRIDENT

One reason we can’t completely turn away is Trident. Unlike France, Britain’s nuclear deterrent is highly-dependent on America for its design, manufacture and maintainence.

Given the way America has undermined European defence, Hanton says, “it’s remarkable how silent the British government has been. You’d expect any normal government to say ‘we control our own nuclear weapons’ but they aren’t asserting that at all”.

Under Trump, the independence of Trident “becomes critical”. This presents an opportunity, Hanton believes, to enter a “European military alliance given NATO is dominated by America”.

Anti nuclear activists block one of the entrances to Faslane naval base on the Clyde 

Britain needs “to pick a side” between Europe and the USA. Starmer’s claim that Britain can ride two horses simultaneously is wrong. Britain was pointedly excluded from US-led negotiations on Ukraine with Russia. Meanwhile, EU nations don’t include Britain anymore in major decisions. “We’re out in the cold,” Hanton says, “and we chose to be there. We need to stop the pretence.”

Given the demographic change since the Brexit vote, Hanton thinks Britain would now vote to rejoin, so calling another referendum might be Starmer’s one chance of making a success of his premiership. The dramatic shift in American posture means Starmer could tell voters “everything has changed, we need to return to Europe, but I suspect he’s not brave or visionary enough”.

As for the new trade deal, Hanton says it “reinforces Britain's vassalage. America will raise an extra $6billion annually through 10% tariffs on most imports, whereas Britain will slash tariffs from over 5% to below 2%.

“UK car exports are capped at 100,000, with 10% tariffs. [Above that quota] manufacturers pay crippling 27% tariffs. This inevitably means cuts in UK car exports. Scottish farmers and others will come under new pressure because America - where animal welfare standards are far lower - will see a 12-fold increase in beef exports. It reinforces Britain’s supplicant position. Now, more than ever, UK employees find themselves working for the interests and enrichment of Americans. The US footprint will expand further.

“One aspect of the deal exemplifies Britain's role as America’s handmaiden. By agreeing so quickly to a deal where Washington imposes 10% charges on most imports, UK negotiators set an onerous precedent for the rest of the world. Britain has served Trump well.”

Nevertheless, we can’t be “downcast” at the hard realities of US domination, Hanton says. “We can do something about it. We can start by actually measuring the problem and making policies to deal with it. That’s the purpose of my book - to get people talking. We’re enterprising, well-educated people, but we need government policy to change from just flogging things off to Americans.

“If government choses, it could make a success of a much more independent economy and create a tax base which allows for the proper funding of public services. That doesn’t mean increasing taxes, it means all American businesses paying tax as well, which they’ve mostly declined. The extent of American tax avoidance has undermined us.”

Both the left and right can support this view, Hanton believes. Nor, he says, is he attacking the multinationals which launched this takeover of Britain’s economy. “You can’t criticise lions for being lions, you criticise the zookeepers for letting the lions out of their cage.

“I’m certainly not anti-capitalist. I’m anti this form of capitalism. We need a distinctly British form of capitalism which works for everyone here. To be honest, it’s impressive what the Americans have done, but utterly unimpressive how Britain has responded. We need protection for British enterprise.”