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    How might Trump tariffs affect UK business on ‘Liberation Day’?

    Liberation Day – as the White House grandly calls the unveiling of its new trade policy – is finally upon us.But what it actually means and what the impact will be is still not clear, as president Donald Trump keeps businesses and world leaders waiting until Wednesday to unveil the next round of tariffs.While Mr Trump has suggested all nations will be hit with additional levies – and Sir Keir Starmer has admitted the UK is unlikely to escape the new measures – it’s still far from certain exactly which industries will bear the brunt this time, with steel, aluminium and auto parts already subject to additional import costs.Here’s a look at what’s already known, what could happen, and what investors are doing as uncertainty reigns.Market responseThe top end of the UK stock market has performed relatively well this year, considering concerns over growth, inflation, still-high interest rates and the wider geopolitical landscape.The FTSE 100 is up more than 5 per cent year-to-date, in contrast to the US’ S&P 500 being down around the same amount. The uncertainty has hit smaller businesses more, with the FTSE 250 down 5.2 per cent in 2025 and the AIM All-Share Index down 4.3 per cent.More recently, while there was a sell-off on Monday ahead of these new tariffs, it eventually wasn’t as steep as had initially looked the case and Tuesday saw investors buying once more on price weaknesses, perhaps hinting that some saw limited further downside in share price terms, even with new tariffs to come.It has always been a fool’s game at guessing the stock market’s most immediate, very next move, but AJ Bell analysis notes that while the biggest tech stocks in America – the so-called Magnificent Seven – have lost a combined $2.3 trillion in the first quarter of this year, they “have strong growth prospects well into the future” and “that status makes them natural candidates to attract widespread buying when markets are more upbeat”.In the UK, defence stocks in particular have fared strongly so far, with a domestic political strategy based on increased spending in this area pushing share prices higher – while the price of gold, a traditional safe haven for investors, has repeatedly hit new record highs this year and is predicted by some analysts to rise even further across 2025.How bad could it get?Price hikes and job losses could have a total global economic toll of $1.4 trillion (£1.1 trillion) under the worst-case scenario according to Aston Business School. That is if “full global retaliation with reciprocal tariffs” is the eventual outcome, which would see the US economy in particular hit.Naturally, if the entire planet is affected to that scale, the UK wouldn’t be exempt, but there’s still scope for changing trade paths, perhaps seeking out partners to increase back-and-forth business with if a reliance on the US is no longer plausible.Quite aside from the businesses involved, government spending could also be impacted. Last week, Rachel Reeves noted the government was laying out savings to restore £9.9bn of headroom for government expenditure.One assessment of a worst-case scenario involving Trump tariffs and the UK suggests that would be entirely and immediately wiped out.David Miles, from the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) Budget responsibility committee, told MPs: “If tariffs at 20 – 25 per cent were put on the UK and maintained for five years, our assessment of what that does is that it will knock out all the headroom that the government currently has.“Had we made that a central forecast, and had the government not changed policy at all knowing that we were going to take that as our central forecast, then the headroom would have pretty much all gone.”Mr Miles noted the improbability of the “extreme” scenario, which would include a term beyond the next US presidential elections, but the OBR further noted the hit to business confidence across the UK caused by the uncertainty around tariffs and other costs.A more optimistic viewAt the other end of the scale, there’s the perspective that some changes could in fact mean the UK might actually benefit from a trade war. Again, it’s important to note that’s on a broad, all-encompassing term – there would still be businesses or industries negatively affected within that.But the OBR noted that if the UK avoided involvement in a trade war, reciprocal tariffs and the like, some redirected trade flows could end up increasing business this side of the water.Much of that is based around the fact that the UK-US trade deficit is far more reasonably balanced than, for example, the EU-US one.Professor Irina Surdu-Nardella, of Warwick Business School, told CNBC tariffs could yet have a limited impact on the UK.“Effects would be relatively limited to industries such as fishing and mining,” Ms Surdu-Nardella said, pointing to the “service-focused nature of the UK economy” meaning much of it would be unscathed by import tariffs.Of course, there’s also the possibility that Mr Trump and Mr Starmer find an agreement whereby British companies end up entirely unaffected by the whole process, potentially giving them a foothold to gain further business with overseas customers. 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    ‘Awful April’ bills rise will push people to poverty, homelessness and foodbanks, charities warn

    Foodbank use and homelessness are set to rise, charities have warned as ‘awful April’ pushes up the cost of crucial bills, including energy and water, for millions of households across the country. People across the country are struggling to afford the bare essentials and with somany costs rising at once, from gas to council tax, has led to fresh calls for ministers to help limit the impact. From Tuesday, the annual average energy bill will go up by £111 a year, or £9.25 a month, to £1,849, after Ofgem raised the energy cap.Water bills are also set to soar by an average of 26 per cent, or £123 a year, in England and Wales, while council tax will rise by £108 a year on average, after ministers confirmed they would be allowed to increase by at most 5 per cent.Matt Downie, chief executive at Crisis, the housing charity, warned it was becoming “even harder for people on low incomes to afford the basic essentials. This is leaving them dangerously exposed, forced into debt and in real danger of being pushed into homelessness as the cost of living crisis continues to bite.” Rachel Reeves’ decision to freeze housing benefits from Tuesday in last October’s Budget would also “push people deeper into poverty and homelessness,” he added. Trussell warned more people would be forced to turn to food banks (Danny Lawson/PA) More

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    Watch in full: Economists grilled on Rachel Reeves’s spring statement as millions brace for bill rises (cloned)

    Watch as UK economists appear before parliament’s Treasury Committee on Tuesday, 1 April, to answer questions about Rachel Reeves’s spring statement.Last week, the chancellor outlined a fresh set of cuts to government spending without raising taxes, blaming a dramatic slowdown in growth.Ms Reeves faced a major setback in the hours before delivering her statement when the government’s official spending watchdog rejected its forecasts for how much its welfare cuts would save. That prompted the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to slash its economic growth forecast for this year from 2 per cent to 1 per cent.She was forced to go further than expected to fall back within her self-imposed borrowing rules, so set out fresh measures to cut the government welfare bills.Changes set out by the chancellor to previously announced welfare reforms will see the health element of universal credit cut in half for new claimants and then frozen. Elsewhere, the universal credit standard allowance will increase from £92 per week in 2025-26, to £106 per week by 2029-30. It had previously been expected to rise to £107 per week by that year.This week, millions of households across the UK are bracing for yet another wave of price hikes, as bills for energy, water, council tax, and more increase from 1 April.Dubbed “awful April,” these rising costs are putting even more pressure on household budgets, prompting fresh calls for government intervention.Energy bills for millions on standard variable tariffs will rise by an average of £111 a year, while water bills in some areas will jump by nearly 47 per cent.Council tax increases will also hit households across England, Scotland, and Wales, with some local authorities imposing hikes of almost 10 per cent. On top of this, the cost of road tax, broadband, and TV licences is also climbing. More

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    Donald Trump signs off Keir Starmer’s controversial Chagos Islands deal

    Donald Trump has formally signed off Sir Keir Starmer’s deal to hand the Chagos islands over to Mauritius, No 10 has said. The agreement is now being “finalised” between the UK and Mauritius.A Downing Street spokesperson said: “We are now working with the Mauritian government to finalise the deal and sign the treaty.” A source added: “It’s now between us and the Mauritian government to finalise the deal following the discussions with us. We have had the discussions with the US and we are now finalising with the Mauritians.”Trump signed off on Chagos when he met Starmer in the White House More

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    Badenoch says boy Adolescence lead character based on was ‘not white’

    Kemi Badenoch has said Adolescence is based on a true story that has been “fundamentally changed” and that the real-life perpetrator was not white, a theory already rejected by one of the drama’s makers.Co-creator Jack Thorne recently dismissed an online theory that the series changed the race of the lead character and stressed it was not based on a real case.The drama about a teenage boy who is accused of killing a girl from his school examines so-called incel (involuntary celibate) culture and has prompted a national conversation about online safety.Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer hosted a roundtable at Downing Street with Thorne and children’s charities on Monday to talk about young boys being influenced by misogyny they encounter online.Tory leader Mrs Badenoch said she had not watched the series.“I don’t have time to watch anything to be honest, but I have read about it … what I understand is that this is a fictional representation of a story that is actually quite different,” she told LBC.She said it “certainly touches on some of the things that are happening in the world today” but is not the biggest thing happening when it comes to people being radicalised on social media.“There are bigger problems, such as Islamic terrorism and that kind of radicalisation, and the story which it is based on has been fundamentally changed, and so creating policy on a work of fiction rather than on reality is the real issue.”She was later asked on GB News if she thinks white boys are being wrongly singled out.“Adolescence is a fictional story. It’s based on a real story, but my understanding is that the boy who committed that crime was not white,” she said.She said Sir Keir having meetings sparked by the reaction to the programme was a “gimmick”, after Labour had said the same about the Tories’ proposed mobile phone ban in schools.“It’s a gimmick. He thinks that he’s going to touch the people of this country. ‘They’re all watching Netflix, so I’ll just talk about the thing they’re watching on TV’.”Some have said the call for a ban on pupils using phones is unnecessary as many schools already do not allow children to use mobiles.A post on social media amplified by Elon Musk has suggested the story, which features a white actor, is based on the Southport attacker.Co-creator Thorne recently rejected the accusations of “race-swapping” in the series.It is not based on a true story and is “making a point about masculinity”, and not race, Thorne told the News Agents podcast.“It’s absurd to say that (knife crime) is only committed by black boys. It’s absurd. It’s not true. And history shows a lot of cases of kids from all races committing these crimes,” he said. More

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    Watch live: Economists grilled on Rachel Reeves’s spring statement as millions brace for bill rises

    Watch live as UK economists appear before parliament’s Treasury Committee on Tuesday, 1 April, to answer questions about Rachel Reeves’s spring statement.Last week, the chancellor outlined a fresh set of cuts to government spending without raising taxes, blaming a dramatic slowdown in growth.Ms Reeves faced a major setback in the hours before delivering her statement when the government’s official spending watchdog rejected its forecasts for how much its welfare cuts would save. That prompted the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to slash its economic growth forecast for this year from 2 per cent to 1 per cent.She was forced to go further than expected to fall back within her self-imposed borrowing rules, so set out fresh measures to cut the government welfare bills.Changes set out by the chancellor to previously announced welfare reforms will see the health element of universal credit cut in half for new claimants and then frozen. Elsewhere, the universal credit standard allowance will increase from £92 per week in 2025-26, to £106 per week by 2029-30. It had previously been expected to rise to £107 per week by that year.This week, millions of households across the UK are bracing for yet another wave of price hikes, as bills for energy, water, council tax, and more increase from 1 April.Dubbed “awful April,” these rising costs are putting even more pressure on household budgets, prompting fresh calls for government intervention.Energy bills for millions on standard variable tariffs will rise by an average of £111 a year, while water bills in some areas will jump by nearly 47 per cent.Council tax increases will also hit households across England, Scotland, and Wales, with some local authorities imposing hikes of almost 10 per cent. On top of this, the cost of road tax, broadband, and TV licences is also climbing. More

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    Trump tariffs latest: Global cost of trade war revealed as Lammy says UK ‘preparing for the worst’

    Starmer and Trump hold ‘productive negotiations’ between US and UK trade dealThe UK’s foreign secretary David Lammy has said Britain is “preparing for the worst”, after Downing Street admitted Britain would be hit by Donald Trump’s looming tariffs.Global markets have been rocked as the Trump administration prepares to unleash its so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs this week, with none of Washington’s trading partners expected to emerge unscathed from import taxes anticipated by Goldman Sachs to average 15 per cent.If the situation escalates into a full-scale trade war, it could cost the global economy $1.4trn, the Aston Business School estimates.Speaking after business secretary Jonathan Reynolds insisted no country was “better placed” than the UK to strike a deal with Washington, Mr Lammy told MPs: “It’s hugely important at this time that we continue the intense conversations we’re having with the US administration on getting an economic agreement.“But of course we prepare for the worst – all options remain on the table.”Goldman Sachs warned on Tuesday that, even with a US deal, the UK’s economy is still expected to suffer a greater hit than previously anticipated.Trump signs off Keir Starmer’s controversial Chagos Islands dealWhile Sir Keir Starmer may have failed to avert looming US tariffs hitting the UK, there was better news for the UK government as No 10 announced that Donald Trump has formally signed off Keir Starmer’s deal to hand the Chagos islands over to Mauritius.The agreement is now being “finalised” between the UK and Mauritius, Downing Street said.Kate Devlin and David Maddox have more details in this report:Andy Gregory1 April 2025 15:42The UK government’s approach to seeking an economic deal with Donald Trump is “not about sucking up to anyone”, the business secretary has insisted.Jonathan Reynolds told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Standing up for the country, doing a strong response to this, is about pursuing your own national interest – and the UK’s national interest is in reaching an agreement. “We have things available to us that are not available to other countries, and that’s because the existing UK-US trading relationship is a fair and balanced one – the US does not have a significant deficit in traded manufactured goods, which is so much a part of their thinking. “So there are things available to us. It’s not about sucking up to anyone. It’s not about not responding. It’s about pursuing our national interest – that is what the government is doing. “And whilst there is a chance of delivering that, I think that is the right approach.”Andy Gregory1 April 2025 15:27Starmer asked if he feels ‘played’ by Trump over tariffsAsked if he had been “played” by Donald Trump as it appeared that efforts by Sir Keir to build a good relationship had failed to protect the UK from tariffs, the prime minister told Sky News: “The US is our closest ally.“Our defence, our security, our intelligence are bound up in a way that no two other countries are.“So it’s obviously in our national interest to have a close working relationship with the US, which we’ve had for decades, and I want to ensure we have for decades to come.”Andy Gregory1 April 2025 15:13Trump tariffs will impact UK economy, chancellor tells Cabinet colleaguesDonald Trump’s tariffs will have an impact on the UK economy, chancellor Rachel Reeves has told her fellow Cabinet ministers.Ms Reeves told this morning’s Cabinet meeting that “global tariffs will have an impact on the UK as an open trading economy”, but said that “securing a deal could mitigate some of those effects”.Andy Gregory1 April 2025 15:01Badenoch backdrop mocked as Tory woes overshadow press conferenceThe Conservatives’ have drawn mockery after Daily Mail’s political editor compared the backdrop used for Kemi Badenoch’s speech to an abandoned mattress.Sharing the image, Labour joked that “the DFS sale starts earlier every year”, while the Lib Dems wrote: “We thought the Tories were against fly tipping?”Attending the press conference, The Independent’s political correspondent Archie Mitchell wrote that the event felt like “a sign of how badly the party is struggling”, with the party’s lack of funds having “long been a talking point in Tory circles, with swathes of head office staff being made redundant to shore up the party’s finances”.Noting that the venue at Tory HQ felt “more like a classroom than a venue for a major political party’s conference”, he wrote: “Not only could they not rent out a suitable venue to host journalists, they could not get a usually friendly think tank or donor to put them up in a more appropriate spot.”Andy Gregory1 April 2025 14:47US should recognise UK is a free country with liberal values, says Kemi BadenochWashington’s State Department should recognise that the UK is “a free country with liberal values”, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has said – after US officials expressed concern over the prosecution of a British anti-abortion campaigner.Ms Badenoch said that laws surrounding so-called “buffer zones” outside abortion clinics had been passed democratically and “we need to respect what Parliament votes for”.The anti-abortion campaigner, 64, was on trial at Poole Magistrates’ Court last month, accused of breaching the Public Spaces Protection Order on two days in March 2023. The verdict will be delivered on Friday.Andy Gregory1 April 2025 14:33Consumers may be spared from Trump tariffs, experts sayUK consumers could be spared from price rises following Donald Trump’s tariffs but job cuts could worsen for some of the hardest-hit firms, experts say.Mr Trump has imposed tariffs on UK aluminium and steel, and carmakers exporting to the US, in a bid to boost American production and protect home-grown manufacturers.The tariffs could have a major impact on the country’s car industry because it could make it harder for UK businesses to sell to the US.Economist Swati Dhingra, a member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), suggested that the inflation impact could be “less than feared”.This is because the main goods that the US imports from the UK, including refined oil, were unlikely to see cost increases on account of tariffs.Fellow economist and MPC member, Megan Greene, said tariffs could end up being “disinflationary”, meaning they help bring down the rate of overall price rises in the UK.Alexander Butler1 April 2025 14:26Chancellor has spoken with US counterpart ahead of Trump tariffs, Starmer’s Cabinet toldChancellor Rachel Reeves has spoken to her US counterpart ahead of the expected tariffs ordered by Donald Trump.Sir Keir Starmer’s Cabinet was told this morning that the chancellor spoke to US treasury secretary Scott Bessent on Monday, according to a No 10 readout of the meeting.Sir Keir also updated ministers on the US tariffs expected this week in response to any decision from the White House.Rachel Reeves imposed cuts to welfare but did not raise taxes in her spring statement. 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    Badenoch claims Adolescence ‘fundamentally changed’ story it is based on – despite admitting she hasn’t seen it

    Kemi Badenoch has said Adolescence is based on a true story that has been “fundamentally changed”, and that while it touches on an issue in society, Islamic terrorism is a bigger problem.Co-creator Jack Thorne recently dismissed an online theory that the series changed the race of the lead character from a real-life case it was supposedly based on.The drama about a teenage boy who is accused of killing a girl from his school examines so-called incel (involuntary celibate) culture and has prompted a national conversation about online safety.Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer hosted a roundtable at Downing Street with Thorne and children’s charities on Monday to talk about young boys being influenced by misogyny they encounter online.Tory leader Mrs Badenoch said she had not watched the series.“I don’t have time to watch anything to be honest, but I have read about it … what I understand is that this is a fictional representation of a story that is actually quite different,” she told LBC.“And I think it’s an interesting story. It certainly touches on some of the things that are happening in the world today, but it is not the biggest thing that is happening in the world today in terms of what is happening to people being radicalised on social media.”She said she was aware of what the series is about.The prime minister met with some of the show’s creators on Monday to discussed the issues raised in the series More