How will President Trump’s global tariffs impact UK businesses?

Without doubt, 2^nd April 2025 will be remembered for many months to come by businesses and Governments around the world, with President Trump’s decisions having a massive impact on global trade. Economists are already predicting that these tariffs will increase consumer costs across the world and there is a high risk of a global recession.

 The plan is simple – to increase costs for importing overseas products to encourage the manufacture of products within the United States.  President Trump intends to remove the USA’s reliance on overseas imports and make it more self sufficient. This has been the basis for previous measures and new tariffs are designed to target countries who impose ‘trade barriers’ which have impacted the USA’s ability to maintain a competitive manufacturing sector. In his announcement, 2nd April 2025, President Trump confirmed that an immediate 10% base line tariff would be introduced on 5th April with further reciprocal, tariffs being imposed from 9th April 2025. Although ‘full reciprocal’ tariffs were considered, it was determined that a discounted rate of up to 50% would be imposed.

 These new tariffs will apply to all goods that are not already subject to Executive Orders (e.g. Steel and Aluminium) as those rates continue to apply.

 Alison Horner, Partner at MHA, said “President Trump has consistently talked about VAT being a ‘trade barrier’ yet the considered percentage applied to the UK us only 10% (UK VAT is 20%). Although this tariff is significantly lower than even its closest trading partner (EU), the blanket tariff will have a significant impact on sectors such as pharmaceuticals who have traded products under a tariff-free environment for many years”.

 Read more here.