THERESA May is shamefully “too weak” to stand up to Donald Trump on steel tariffs, Jeremy Corbyn will claim today as he accuses the Prime Minister of trying to appease the US President to get a post-Brexit trade deal.

But in a speech to the GMB trade union conference in Brighton, the Labour leader will say the unilateral imposition of US tariffs on EU steel have shown this is a “Tory pipe-dream”.

Mr Corbyn will use his keynote address to tear into the American President’s outspoken interventions and foreign policy choices.

Declaring the US tariffs to be wrong, he will say they risk hurting workers not only in the US but also across the world by sparking a tit-for-tat retaliation.

The Labour leader will accuse the US administration of failing to support workers while “giving eye-watering handouts to the super-rich”.

Mr Corbyn will say that a future Labour government would work with the “real experts”; workers, technicians, engineers and designers, their unions, consumers and communities to upgrade Britain’s economy by taking on the power of a tiny elite that was holding the country back with their “failed free market fundamentalism”.

He will insist that the UK Government’s “timid response” on US steel tariffs “shamefully fails to stand up to Trump”.

The Labour leader will say: “We’ve now seen it time and time again. Theresa May and her Government were too weak to stand up to Trump over the Muslim ban or his promotion of the disgusting Britain First or his plunging the future of the planet into ever greater danger by pulling out of the Paris Climate Change Accord or his punitive tariffs on Bombardier or his ripping up of the Iran nuclear deal or his reckless threat to peace by recognising Jerusalem, including occupied Palestinian territory as Israel’s capital.”

Mr Corbyn will add: “The Tories are too weak to stand up to the powerful and too in hock to them even if they wanted to. Theresa May is appeasing Donald Trump in the hope of getting a race-to-the-bottom trade deal with the US after we leave the European Union. The Trump trade tariffs show that’s a Tory pipe-dream.”

Yesterday, Mrs May told Mr Trump that the US tariffs on EU steel were "unjustified and deeply disappointing", Downing Street has said.

She made her views clear to the US President in a 30-minute transatlantic phonecall ahead of the G7 summit in Canada later this week when she and other leaders will press Mr Trump to lift the tariffs or, at the very least, create an exemption for the European Union.

The PM’s spokesman characterised the phonecall as "constructive" and said they agreed to discuss the issue further in Quebec later this week.

Meanwhile in the Commons, Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, told MPs he was "disappointed" with the tariffs but added that he hoped once the UK had left the EU "we'll have no problems with a UK exemption".

Dr Fox welcomed the EU's decision to take the matter to the World Trade Organisation but raised fears that it could be difficult for the WTO to act.

"The problem with using national security, as has been done in this case, is twofold,” he told MPs.

"Were the United States to be successful, it sets a precedent for others do the same and to use national security as pretext for protectionism, and secondly, it leads the WTO into the realms of having to determine what is and what is not acceptable as a definition for national security, something the WTO has always shied away from."

Addressing the EU's decision to launch counter-tariffs on a variety of US products towards the end of June, Dr Fox refused to say whether the UK would back them.

"We still want to see what the measures themselves are, specifically we have been talking to the Irish government about the issue of bourbon being on the list because of the potential implications for the Scotch whisky industry and the Irish whiskey industry," added the Scot.

Labour's John Mann suggested the UK should impose tariffs on golf club owners in Scotland, where Mr Trump owns two courses.

Mr Mann said: "Let's bring them in immediately and stand up for our steel communities and our steel workers instead of this rubbish about how we can do nothing about it: fight him."

Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg warned that "tit-for-tat retaliation" could make a trade war worse, saying the "lesson of trade history is that protectionism is worst for the country that imposes it".

Dr Fox agreed that a "tit-for-tat dispute will help nobody".

Liberal Democrat former minister Tom Brake claimed that if the US "continues to act like a rogue state", it might need to be suspended from the G7.

The Trade Secretary replied: "Treating the United States in the way that he suggests is quite wrong and also explains a great deal why they have such a small representation in this House."

Earlier, Dr Fox told MPs that if there were tariffs, counter-measures and then measures against the counter-measures, it was "very easy to see how this ramps up into a global trading disaster".