Temu and Shein among fast-fashion sites affected by drop in first three months of this year but sales in rise to EU
Exports to the US from Chinese online shops such as Temu and Shein have plunged in the face of Donald Trump’s trade war, as shipping from China to the EU has increased.
Official Chinese data showed its total e-commerce shipping to the US dropped 65% by volume in the first three months of the year, but rose by 28% in Europe.
Continue reading...Plans to protect UK from extreme weather are inadequate, Climate Change Committee says in scathing assessment
Labour is putting people, the economy and the environment in increasing peril by failing to act on the effects of the climate crisis, the UK’s climate watchdog has said.
Flooding, droughts and heatwaves are all increasing in severity due to climate breakdown, but current plans to protect people, land and infrastructure against extreme weather have been judged inadequate in a scathing assessment of the UK’s preparedness.
Continue reading...US president will curb some duties on foreign parts in domestically manufactured cars, administration says
Donald Trump unveiled plans to water down his sweeping tariffs for US carmakers on Tuesday by curbing some duties on foreign cars and parts, granting a reprieve to an industry that warned his strategy would increase costs for American manufacturers by tens of billions of dollars.
Carmakers subject to a 25% tariff on imports will not be subject to other levies Trump has imposed, for example, on steel and aluminum. US automakers will also be allowed to apply for tariff relief on a proportion of the costs imposed for imported parts, although that relief will be phased out over the next two years.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Countries are struggling to manage expensive loans, with much of debt transacted through London
Diplomats from eight southern and east African countries have signed a letter calling on the UK government to support a private member’s bill that aims to speed up debt restructurings, after economic crises meant countries were unable to pay back loans.
Poor countries’ economies have been hit by a series of global events in recent years, including the coronavirus pandemic, which reduced growth; the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which sent inflation soaring; and raised US interest rates, which have pushed up the cost of international loans to often unaffordable levels.
Continue reading...Experts warn of slowing economy after score based on Americans’ financial outlooks fell by 32% since January
US consumer sentiment plummeted in April after Donald Trump’s trade war threw the global economy into chaos, according to a new report.
The index of consumer sentiment, a score based on a monthly survey asking Americans about their financial outlooks, fell by 32% since January – the largest drop since the 1990 recession, according to the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
Continue reading...Beijing will ‘strengthen bottom-line thinking’ as reports say it could drop tariffs on some US products
Xi Jinping has announced a plan to counter China’s continuing economic problems and the impact of the US trade war, as reports swirl that it could drop tariffs on some US products, including semiconductors.
Friday’s meeting of the politburo was convened to discuss China’s economy, which since the pandemic has faced difficulties fuelled by a housing sector crisis, youth unemployment and Donald Trump’s tariffs on all Chinese imports to the US.
Continue reading...Bosses from automative, manufacturing and energy warned MPs about effect of Trump tariffs
Britain’s manufacturers will start cutting jobs “within weeks” unless the government can strike a deal to safeguard the UK economy from Donald Trump’s trade war, industry leaders have told MPs.
Senior executives from the UK’s automotive, manufacturing and energy sectors warned a committee of MPs to expect job losses this summer if the US moves ahead with a swathe of global trade tariffs set out by Trump earlier this month.
Continue reading...Spanish PM says ‘industrial and technological plan’ will ensure country commits to spending 2% of GDP on defence
Spain has announced a €10.5bn investment plan to ensure it will reach its long-delayed Nato commitment of spending 2% of its GDP on defence this year, saying it has become obvious “only Europe will know how to protect Europe” from now on.
The country – which lags well behind other western nations by dedicating about 1.3% of its GDP to defence spending – is one of the Nato members that has been pressured by the Trump administration to increase its spending, and had previously committed to hitting the 2% threshold by 2029.
Continue reading...Quarter-point cut in main rate to 2.25% aimed at tackling slowdown in eurozone growth and impact of US border taxes
The cost of borrowing has fallen across the 20-member euro area for the third time this year after the European Central Bank cut its main interest rate to 2.25% in response to slowing growth and Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The Frankfurt-based bank cut its benchmark deposit rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Thursday, in line with economist expectations, to tackle a slowdown in the bloc and the impact from the border taxes imposed earlier this month on all EU imports into the US.
Continue reading...Unctad says many countries targeted with high tariff rates are unlikely to be a threat to US
The UN’s trade and development arm, Unctad, is calling on Donald Trump to exempt the world’s poorest and smallest countries from “reciprocal” tariffs, or risk “serious economic harm”.
In a report published on Monday, Unctad identifies 28 nations the US president singled out for a higher tariff rate than the 10% baseline – despite each accounting for less than 0.1% of the US trade deficit.
Continue reading...Effects could tip one into recession and undermine other’s fragile economy but prospects for rapprochement are not hopeless
Sky-high tariffs that now hang heavily over US-China trade mean, effectively, that they have declared a trade embargo on each other, normally an act of war. The economic consequences for both will hurt.
The US’s $150bn (£113bn) or so of exports to China will fall away quickly, while China’s $440bn worth of exports to the US may drop by up to 75% over the next 18 months, unless some sort of negotiation happens. No one will be spared the effects.
Continue reading...Chinese customs official says trade has diversified away from US in recent years and plays up its ‘vast domestic market’
China has played down the risk of damage to its exports from Donald Trump’s tariffs, with an official saying the “the sky won’t fall”, as stock markets rose on Monday amid signs of a retreat on electronics restrictions.
The world’s second-largest economy has diversified its trade away from the US in recent years, according to Lyu Daliang, a customs administration spokesperson, in comments reported by state-owned agency Xinhua.
Continue reading...Exemption, seen as a climbdown, includes laptops and chips, and is likely to help firms such as Apple and Nvidia
US stock markets were expected to stage a recovery on Monday after Donald Trump excluded imports of smartphones and laptops from his tariff regime late on Friday night.
Shares in Apple and chip maker Nvidia were on course to soar after tariffs on their products imported into the US were lifted for 90 days.
Continue reading...Lasting damage has been done not only to Trump’s political credibility but to globalisation as a system
At the beginning of this helter-skelter week, Downing Street was declaring globalisation not only dead but a failure. Now, only five trading days later, the autopsy is still under way but the victim may instead be economic populism, strangled by Wall Street, the citadel of globalisation. Donald Trump’s so-called liberation day may in fact have been the anti-globalist’s entombment day.
In an effort to deny even a tactical retreat, Trump’s aides insist the White House goal all along was not to weaken globalism, or even to protect the US economy with tariffs, but instead to get into a negotiation to lower tariffs around the world and to punish China. As cover stories go, it is hardly credible, partly because the tariffs were repeatedly lauded by Trump as a macroeconomic revenue-raising measure, or a means to bolster US manufacturing.
Continue reading...Chancellor says government ‘will remain pragmatic and cool-headed’ while seeking US trade deal
The care minister has defended the government’s cautious response to developments in global trade after the sweeping imposition of tariffs by the US administration in Washington.
Stephen Kinnock said “If we were to just jump in one direction or the other every time there’s a new development, we would be jumping around all over the place. I don’t think that that’s going to be in the interest of our economy or of our national security or of our business community.”
Continue reading...February GDP rise was bigger than forecast – but impact from Donald Trump’s tariff war is yet to come
The UK economy unexpectedly expanded by 0.5% in February, figures show, in a boost for the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, before an expected downturn sparked by Donald Trump’s tariff war.
The increase in gross domestic product in February was five times larger than the 0.1% that a poll of City economists had forecast, while January’s figure of a modest fall of 0.1% was revised up to 0.0% growth.
Continue reading...Chinese leader canvasses Spain and other trading partners on how to tackle economic fallout as market turmoil continues
China has raised its tariffs on US products to 125% in the latest salvo of the trade dispute with Washington, just hours after Xi Jinping said there were “no winners in a tariff war”.
Xi made the comments during a meeting with the Spanish prime minister in which he invited the EU to work with China to resist “bullying”, part of an apparent campaign to shore up other trading partners.
Continue reading...It would take an ‘extraordinary deal’ for any country to improve on 10% rate, says Kevin Hassett
A senior economic adviser to Donald Trump has said it would take “an extraordinary deal” for any country, including the UK, to improve on the 10% tariff rate the US has imposed almost worldwide, pouring cold water on Downing Street’s hopes for a breakthrough.
Trump succumbed to pressure from plunging financial markets on Wednesday and temporarily reduced “retaliatory” tariffs on all countries’ goods to 10%, except those from China, which face a rate of 145%.
Continue reading...As China retaliates against tariffs, it is also making strategic manoeuvres on EU and Asia to maximise opportunities
On the basis of Napoleon’s dictum “never interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake”, there was a large incentive for China to do precisely nothing as Donald Trump displayed his determination to lose friends and induce market panic. Indeed, the Chinese advocates of passivity cited a social media meme attributed to President Xi Jinping: “Do nothing. Win.”
Initially it was tempting for China to sit back and watch the US’s former allies recoil at Trump’s disruptive war on globalisation and let them realise that, by comparison, China represented an oasis of stability, modernity and predictability.
Continue reading...Sarah Breedon says too early to judge impact on inflation of ‘most significant change in trade policy in a century’
UK economic growth will be hit by US tariffs, which are the biggest trade policy change in a century, a senior Bank of England official has warned.
Sarah Breeden, the Bank’s deputy governor for financial stability, said on Thursday that business activity was likely to be adversely affected by Donald Trump’s tariff regime, dragging down the UK’s already weak growth rate.
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