Tariffs dwell: UK suspends some tariffs to ease enterprise stress as commerce deal ‘days away’
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.
It came as reports suggested that a breakthrough between UK and the US over tariffs could be reached in the coming days.
With just 90 days for the US to strike more than 90 deals, senior government sources told The Times that conversations over a potential agreement with Mr Trump would be held soon.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves told reporters: “Of course we want to secure the best deal possible for British jobs and British industry. And we are absolutely … resolved to do everything we can.”
ICYMI: The chart that reveals why Trump backflipped on tariffs
So why did Donald Trump back away from the broader tariff push with the 90-day pause announced last Wednesday? The answer is simple: the economic cost to the US was too high.
Using a global economic model, James Giesecke and Robert Waschik of Victoria University have been estimating the macroeconomic consequences of the Trump administration’s tariff plans as they have developed.
As is clear from the table in the article below, the US would have faced steep and immediate losses in employment, investment, growth, and most importantly, real consumption, the best measure of household living standards:
Mapped: Which UK cities could be hit hardest by Trump’s tariffs?
US tariffs are set to cause an “uneven storm” across the UK with Coventry expected to be the worst affected, a think tank has warned.
The West Midlands, the home of British car manufacturing, and Wales, which is a significant contributor to British steel, are likely to take the brunt of the economic impact caused by Donald Trump’s escalating trade war, a study by Centre for Cities shows.
Rebecca Whittaker reports:
SNL’s Colin Jost and Michael Che mock Donald Trump’s tariffs U-turn in Weekend Update skit
Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost kicked off the latest episode with a segment mocking Donald Trump’s U-turn on tariff policies.
Jost quipped that Trump had spent the past week trying to “rescue the economy from the disastrous policies of whoever was president last week”.
Co-host Michael Che parodied Trump’s reaction to the tariffs fallout, in which he said “Sometimes you have to take medicine”, to which Che said: “Yeah, but this feels like we took a whole bottle of medicine with a glass of vodka and laid in a warm bath.”
Ellie Muir reports:
Trump is ‘making it up as he goes’ on tariffs, hurting US and allies, says Wall Street Journal
Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal flamed Donald Trump in yet another critical editorial, this time accusing him of “making it up as he goes,” with his tariff decisions hurting the United States and its allies.
“You almost have to smile” when the president claims the shuddering economy is “all going according to plan,” scoffed the editorial Thursday.
The “reality is that Mr. Trump is making it up as he goes, and it would help if he had an actual strategy to deal with China.,” the newspaper added. Instead, Trump is “outright punishing the allies he needs for a coherent China strategy”, the editorial said.
Watch: Business secretary would not bring Chinese companies into UK steel sector
Trump trade representative says tariffs on electronic likely after investigation
US trade representative Jamieson Greer has said that the electronics which were exempted from Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” will still be subject to levies, just under a different category.
Those products were moved from reciprocal tariffs to the national security tariff regime, which requires an investigation before tariffs are imposed and “where we have studies ongoing for pharmaceuticals, for semiconductors, metals, et cetera”, he said in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation.
Opinion | Insider trading accusations against Trump should not be a laughing matter – but they are
In a comment piece for Independent Voices, business journalist Chris Blackhurst writes:
In Donald Trump, America has a president who combines business with politics. So far, we’ve witnessed Trump and golf, Trump and social media, Trump and cyber, Trump and real estate, Trump and artefacts. This is an elected leader who shamelessly plugs the Trump family business interests while seeking to serve his country. Now comes Trump and tariffs.
In theory, since he became president, monetising the Trump name is off limits. It’s for his children to oversee, while an external ethics lawyer is meant to monitor his companies’ dealings and investments. The reality, however, is a blurring of private financial gain and public service.
Even so, the suggestion that his circle was able to make a killing while countries (including his own) were reeling from his tariffs onslaught represents a new low. A reversal was coming, he provided a nudge – and that, plus the rare use of those key initials, pointed to a profitable course of action.
Trump, of course, will deny that he did such a thing. Any share-buying was pure coincidence, as indeed it would be, in relation to the apparent combining of commerce and duty in the above. But normally, the merest whiff of insider trading on the back of performing a public role would be enough to finish a person’s career. Trump is different.
Read the full piece here:
Toy makers hit by Trump’s China tariffs
Toymakers are bracing for rising prices and falling sales as a result of Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Nearly 80 percent of all toys sold in the US are made in China — meaning what were once cheap toys could soon become luxuries, CNN reports.
Major toymakers like Mattel and Hasbro are also seeing their stocks sink, CNBC reports, as Trump’s trade war with Xi Jinping shows no signs of slowing.
SNL mocks ‘messiah’ Trump over chaotic tariffs policy
Saturday Night Live has skewered Donald Trump over his tariffs policy and continued trade war with China, following on from last week’s “Liberation Day” cold open.
James Austin Johnson returned to Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza as the president in an Easter-themed sketch that began with Jesus, played by Mikey Day, casting the moneylenders out of the temple on his arrival in Jerusalem.
The Biblical tableau froze as SNL’s Trump appeared. “Remind you of anyone?” he said to laughter. “I also got rid of money last week, but instead of one temple, I did a whole country. Maybe even the globe. The money’s gone.”
“Hi, it’s me your favourite president, Donald Jesus Trump, comparing myself to the son of God once again,” Johnson continued.
Oliver O’Connell has more details here:
How are exporters seeking to deal with Trump’s tariffs?
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.”
