The impact of tariffs on the UK will not be certain until more details are revealed in April but analysts estimate it could add 21% to the cost of our exports.
Taken at face value Donald Trump’s embrace of reciprocal tariffs is a declaration of total trade war, that would amount to perhaps the single biggest peacetime shock to global commerce.
In promising to levy import taxes on any nation that imposes tariffs or VAT on US exports, he is following through on a campaign promise to address a near trillion dollar trade deficit – the difference between the value of America’s exports and its imports – that he believes amounts to a tax on American jobs.
In response, he wants to deploy tariffs as an „external revenue service“, simultaneously easing the US deficit and, so the theory goes, pricing out imports in favour of domestic production.
With a promise to reestablish industries, from chip production lost to Taiwan, and car and pharmaceutical manufacturing to Europe, he is promising a country-by-country tailored assault on the status quo.
