Tariffs dwell: UK suspends some tariffs to ease enterprise stress as commerce deal ‘days away’

Donald Trump is waiting for Chinese leader Xi Jinping to call him personally, while Chinese officials are wary of putting Xi on a call that is unpredictable and potentially embarrassing, The New York Times reports.

Mr Trump has said he would like to speak with Mr Xi, but he has stopped short of requesting a phone call, believing that it is Beijing’s turn to ask for a call, the outlet reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

When the first two rounds of 10 per cent tariffs hit, Zou Guoqing, a Chinese exporter, groaned but didn’t find the barriers insurmountable. He gave up some of his profits and offered his client, a snow-bike factory in Nebraska, price cuts ranging from 5 to 10 per cent.

It seemed to work: The factory agreed to a new order of moulds and parts.

But when Donald Trump announced an additional 34 per cent universal tariff on Chinese goods on 2 April, Mr Zou, who has been exporting to the United States for more than a decade, was incredulous.

“There’s not a thread of feasibility,” said Mr Zou, who does business in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo. “It looks like I would have no choice but give up trading with the US.”

Then came 50 per cent more from Mr Trump, followed by another increase that pushed the universal tariff on Chinese goods to 145 per cent, and Mr Zou said he now could only hope that Mr Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping can communicate.

“We are pausing the shipments,” he said, “until the leaders talk.”

“Savage” cuts to UK foreign aid will leave 55.5 million of the world’s poorest people without access to basic resources, The Independent can reveal.

Analysis by Save the Children, shared exclusively with this publication, lays bare the true impact of repeated cuts to the budget, the latest of which will see spending fall to just 0.3 per cent of gross national income (GNI) – the lowest level in 25 years.

Women and girls will suffer the most as the government is likely forced to scale back programmes across global education, family planning, water and food aid.

Our data correspondent Alicja Hagopian and Whitehall editor Kate Devlin have the exclusive report here:

Donald Trump is acting like a 19th century European autocrat, a historian has suggested.

“We have a democratic leader who seems to have the authority to act as whimsically as a 19th century European autocrat,” Tim Naftali, a historian and senior research scholar at Columbia University, told the Associated Press. “He sneezes and everyone catches a cold.”

Professor Natfali added: “What the president ends up having is what he wants, which is everyone’s attention all of the time.”

Stock investors were warily watching moves across asset classes, in particular the dollar and Treasuries. An index that measures the US dollar against a basket of currencies on Friday fell below 100 for the first time in nearly two years, while the yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bond was on pace for its biggest weekly jump in decades.

In many prior risk-off events, the dollar and Treasuries have acted as safe havens, but that has not been the case over the last week as stocks have tumbled, said Walter Todd, chief investment officer at Greenwood Capital in South Carolina.

“We are the reserve currency and the risk free asset of the world, and our markets are not acting as such,” Mr Todd said.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury on Friday topped 4.5 per cent, which investors have cited as a level that could cause turbulence for stocks. Higher yields translate into higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, while potentially making bonds more competitive investments against stocks.

“Until Treasuries stabilise and start to behave normally, risk assets will struggle,” Barclays analysts said in a note on Friday.

More than half of British adults now believe Donald Trump is not “a friend of Britain’s”, according to new polling suggesting that figure has soared 12 per cent since January.

Polling by Opinion, commissioned by The Observer, found that 34 per cent of UK voters now believe the US is more of a threat than an ally – up from just 16 per cent who held that view in November. Just 35 per cent of respondents said they currently have confidence in Washington as an ally.

That number fell even lower when talking about Mr Trump specifically, with only 16 per cent of British voters polled saying they believed he was trustworthy, against 64 per cent who did not.

Sir Keir Starmer’s government has announced it will temporary suspend the UK global tariff on 89 products in order to ease pressure on businesses in the face of Donald Trump’s global levies.

The UK global tariff – which applies to goods entering the UK that do not qualify for preferential treatment under free trade agreements – will be suspended until 2027 on a wide range of products including pasta, fruit juices, agave syrup, plant bulbs, plywood and plastics.

Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “From food to furniture, this will reduce the cost of everyday items for businesses, with savings hopefully passed onto consumers.

“As we face a new era of global trade, this government is going further faster to make Britain the best country to do business, delivering on our Plan for Change. These suspensions are just another example of that.”

The stock market remains “very unsettled” as investors weigh how to price in any economic fallout from the changing tariff backdrop, Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at the firm Janney Montgomery Scott told Reuters.

The market is “kind of trapped by the level of uncertainty that lurks out there”, Luschini said. “And therefore investors are largely unwilling to make big bets in one direction or another.”

In an interview with ABC’s This Week, US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has said that smartphones, computers and some other electronics including semiconductors will come under separate tariffs.

Mr Lutnick said these separate tariffs may be imposed in a month or so.

Wall Street and industry analysts have warned of massive global implications for the car manufacturing industry if Donald Trump’s 25 per cent import tariffs remain in place, with vehicle sales plummeting by millions as prices for both new and used cars surge, according to reporting by NBC News.

In the US alone, car manufacturers could see costs increase by $107.7bn, according to the Michigan-based think tank, the Centre for Automotive Research. That figure includes $41.9bn for the big three US firms – General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler.

These reports take into account both the 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles that went into effect 10 days ago, and the forthcoming 25 percent tariff on auto parts that begins on 3 May.

Oliver O’Connell reports from New York: