How will the latest Trump tariffs affect the UK?
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Despite the government’s hopes, the UK has not, in the end, been exempted from President Trump’s 25% steel and aluminium tariffs.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said the UK will “keep all options on the table”, but has not announced immediate retaliation.
BBC Verify looks at how big the impact on the UK could be and what might happen next.
Metal products
The value of the UK’s raw steel and aluminium exports to the US in 2024 was around £470m.
But it’s important to note that these latest US tariffs – taxes on imports – also cover products made with steel and aluminium, which covers everything from gym equipment, to furniture, to machinery.
It’s estimated by the Global Trade Alert think tank that the UK’s exports of these products to the US in 2024 was around £2.2bn.
So the total annual value of UK exports affected would be around £2.7bn.
For context, the UK exported around £58bn of goods to the US on an annual basis in 2024 – so the share of goods hit by these new Trump tariffs represents just under 5%.
The UK hopes to conclude a free trade deal with the Trump administration, which could mean these tariffs being removed.
But we have no way of knowing if – or how soon – such an agreement could be concluded.
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Trump has also threatened to impose reciprocal tariffs on all the United States’ trading partners, including the UK, from next month.
These are taxes on imports to the US which are set at a similar rate to taxes other countries put on goods they import from the US.
And the White House has said that, in deciding what level to set them, it will take into account countries’ Value Added Tax rates.
The US government regards VAT as a tax that discriminates against US imports – even though it applies equally to imports and domestically-produced goods.
The UK has a 20% standard VAT rate, which could potentially mean the UK being hit by a substantial reciprocal tariff from the US.
While the UK is not yet retaliating, the European Union has already confirmed it plans to impose tariffs on 26bn euros (£22bn) a year worth of goods imported from America.
And the EU is targeting US goods including Bourbon whiskey, jeans and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, which are considered to be politically sensitive in America because of their iconic status and because of which US states some of them are produced in.
Notwithstanding the hope for a free trade deal, in the wake of any reciprocal tariffs imposed by the US, which are perceived to be unfair and punitive, the UK government could find itself under growing pressure to retaliate in a similar way to the EU.
Why is Trump imposing tariffs?
The US President has a long – and often shifting – list of justifications for imposing these import taxes.
One is that he claims to want to restore fairness to America’s trading relations with the rest of the world.
Trump complains that some other countries have higher tariffs on the goods they import from the US, than the other way round.
The US had an average external tariff of 3.3% in 2023.
That was slightly lower than the UK’s average tariff of 3.8%.
It was also below the European Union’s average tariff of 5% and China’s average tariff of 7.5%.
However, America’s average tariff was considerably lower than those of some of its other trading partners such as India (17%) and South Korea (13.4%).
Broadly speaking, it is legitimate for Trump to point out that some countries have a higher average tariff on imports than America does.
Replacing income tax?
Another justification for tariffs from the president is raising more tax revenue for the US government. At one stage during the presidential election campaign in 2024, he suggested that tariff revenue could entirely replace the federal income tax.
This is not only implausible given the $3 trillion a year value of US imports and the $2 trillion a year raised by income tax – but it needs to be seen in the context of the fact that tariffs would push up US consumer prices.
Trump also wants to put pressure on other countries to change some of their policies. This has been the explicit rationale for US tariffs on Canada and Mexico, with the White House saying it wants to pressure those countries to stamp out cross-border Fentanyl smuggling.
Another key goal articulated by the president is wanting to encourage multinational manufacturing companies to invest and produce more in America to create domestic jobs.
Some of these justifications are inconsistent.
Tariffs cannot be a both a major permanent tax revenue raiser as well as a way to bring manufacturing back to America on a large scale as the latter implies imports – and therefore tariff revenues – slumping.
Moreover, the vast majority of economists are also extremely sceptical about the likelihood of tariffs achieving many of these goals.
