By johnredwood on April 2, 2025

The US has done plenty of homework to prepare for “Liberation Day”. Their doomsday book of tariffs and trade frictions produces long lists of extra costs and charges imposed on US exports. The EU has a particularly long list. With foods it combines high tariffs with bans and elaborate regulations to make it more difficult for US farmers and food companies.

The UK still has a lot of these barriers from its EU days, though it has sensibly taken tariffs off 20% of all product lines into UK to give our consumers more choice and lower prices. The UK could and should go further.

The UK imposes a digital tax on US digital companies. It bans some US food products altogether. It charges four times as much on a US car import than they charge on our car exports. The UK is wrongly planning the big carbon border tax or tariff.

We still do not know if President Trump just plans to use tariffs to arm wrestle our trade barriers down to a fair and lower level. That makes sense and if well executed by both sides could boost prosperity and lower prices.The UK government was wrong not to table an early tariff free draft Agreement with the US. Sometimes President Trump says he wants to impose high general tariffs as a source of revenue. That hits both the exporters and the US consumers facing higher prices for imports. He would need to cut other taxes to offset the impact of a high tariff tax rise on US households.