Category Archives: International trade

Trump tariffs cause fastest slump in British factory export orders in five years

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Decline in output and new orders in April allied with rising uncertainty is prompting layoffs, survey finds

Britain’s factories suffered a slump in export orders last month as Donald Trump’s globally unsettling tariff regime sent overseas demand for UK goods tumbling at the fastest pace in five years.

Manufacturers reported rising economic and trade uncertainties in April as some tariffs took effect and other threatened border taxes loomed, forcing them to lay off workers for a sixth consecutive month.

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Chinese e-commerce exports to US plummet by 65% in face of tariffs

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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.

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China manufacturing activity plummets amid Trump tariff war

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Index of activity drops to lowest reading since December 2023 as a result of ‘sharp changes’ in international trading

China’s factory activity slowed in April, with Beijing blaming “sharp changes” in the global economy as it fights a mounting trade war with the United States.

Punishing US tariffs that reached 145% on many Chinese products came into force in April, and Beijing responded with 125% duties on imports from the US. Chinese exports soared more than 12% last month as businesses rushed to get ahead of the punishing tariffs.

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Xi announces plan for Chinese economy to counter impact of US trade war

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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.

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Boeing hopes to find new buyers for up to 50 planes returned by China

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Airplane manufacturer says it is lobbying Donald Trump over ‘unfortunate’ decision to impose tariffs

Boeing will try to divert as many as 50 planes ordered by Chinese airlines to customers elsewhere after steep tariffs prompted by Donald Trump’s trade war.

The US manufacturer said it was confident it could find other buyers for the planes, but said it was lobbying Trump personally to resolve an “unfortunate situation”.

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UK manufacturers to cut jobs ‘within weeks unless ministers can strike trade deal’

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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.

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Boeing investors brace for fallout from Trump tariffs

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Jets intended for Chinese airline returned to US, raising fears for planemaker as results near

Investors in Boeing are braced to learn the full impact of Donald Trump’s trade war, amid fears the US planemaker could be hit harder than first expected after jets intended for a Chinese airline were returned to the US.

A Boeing 737 Max 8 plane intended for use by a Chinese airline returned to the US on Monday from Boeing’s China finishing centre, according to flight data cited by Reuters. It followed the arrival in the US on Sunday of another 737 Max painted in the livery of China’s Xiamen Airlines at Boeing’s US production hub in Seattle.

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TikTok trend for ‘Dubai chocolate’ causes international shortage of pistachios

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High-end bar with Middle East-style nut filling is rationed in shops as price of raw kernels surges

Product promotion on TikTok is now powerful enough to influence the vast agricultural economies of the US and Iran – at least when it comes to the consumption of high-end confectionery.

A chocolate bar stuffed with a creamy green pistachio filling has become incredibly popular after a series of video clips shared on the social media site. The first bit of footage praising the taste of the expensive so-called “Dubai chocolate” was posted at the end of 2023 and has now been viewed more than 120m times, to say nothing of the many follow-up videos.

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Rural communities could be destroyed if UK signs US trade deal, says former food tsar

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Exclusive: Henry Dimbleby joins farmers in voicing fears of lower standards and a poor deal for British food producers

Britain’s rural communities could be “destroyed”, the former government food tsar has said, if ministers sign a US trade deal that undercuts British farming standards.

Ministers are working on a new trade deal with the US, after previous post-Brexit attempts stalled. Unpopular agreements signed at the time with Australia and New Zealand featured tariff-free access to beef and lamb and were accused of undercutting UK farmers, who are governed by higher welfare standards than their counterparts. Australia, in a trade deal signed by Liz Truss in late 2021 that came into effect in 2023, was given bespoke sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards aimed to not be more “trade-restrictive than necessary to protect human life and health”.

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Nvidia’s CEO makes surprise visit to Beijing after US restricts chip sales to China

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Jensen Huang causes stir on social media and is reported to have met founder of AI company DeepSeek

The chief executive of the American chip maker Nvidia visited Beijing on Thursday, days after the US issued fresh restrictions on sales of the only AI chip it was still allowed to sell to China.

Jensen Huang’s surprise visit was on the invitation of a trade organisation, according to a social media account affiliated with state media.

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Temu and Shein drop US ad spending as they face tariffs on even small sales

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E-tailers also hiking prices after Donald Trump ends ‘de minimis’ exemption for cheap shipments from China and Hong Kong

Temu and Shein are cutting back their spending on US social media advertising as they lose an exemption on tariffs for many of their shipments from China and Hong Kong.

The online e-tailers, both of which ship low-priced China-made goods direct to US shoppers, had been on an ad spree until recently. But under an executive order from Donald Trump, as of 2 May their sales valued at under $800 will no longer be exempt from US tariffs.

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Senior Labour figures call for review of Chinese investment in UK infrastructure

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Government’s rapprochement with Beijing may risk national security in wake of British Steel crisis, party members say

Senior Labour figures have urged the government to review Chinese investment in UK infrastructure in the wake of theBritish Steel crisis, warning that a rapprochement with Beijing could risk national security.

Government officials insisted on Monday the country remained open to funding from Chinese companies even after a dramatic weekend during which ministers wrested control of the Scunthorpe steelmaking plant from the Chinese owners, Jingye.

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Another UK government is doing contradictory things when it comes to China

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Approach to expanding trade has been castigated for allowing Beijing to invest heavily in vital UK infrastructure

As even Donald Trump was forced to accept in scaling back his latest tariffs, China is just too big to ignore. And so it is, on a much smaller scale, that yet another UK government is doing several contradictory things at once when it comes to Beijing.

This weekend brought a particularly resonant example. On the one hand, the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, was hinting that British Steel’s Chinese owner, Jingye, was to blame for neglect – if not worse – over the fate of the threatened blast furnaces at Scunthorpe.

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Sky-high US-China tariffs are a mutual trade embargo that will hurt both sides

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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.

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‘No winners’ in a trade war, says China’s Xi as he heads to Vietnam on charm offensive

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Xi Jinping expected to present China as reliable partner in contrast to US, which imposed – then suspended – tariffs over 40% on some countries

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, warned there would be “no winners” in a trade war and that protectionism “leads nowhere”, as he began a three-nation trip to south-east Asia, starting in Vietnam on Monday.

Xi’s tour, which started in Hanoi, also includes rare visits to Malaysia and Cambodia and will seek to strengthen ties with China’s closest neighbours amid a trade war that has sent shock waves through global markets.

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‘The sky won’t fall’: China plays down Trump tariff risks as stock markets rally

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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.

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US stock markets expected to recover after Trump drops tariffs on mobiles

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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.

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China raises US tariffs to 125% as Xi invites EU to team up against Trump ‘bullying’

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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.

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Will Trump’s tariff chaos be China’s gain in global trade wars?

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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.

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US-China trade war intensifies as Beijing’s tariffs come into effect after Trump pause

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China’s 84% tariffs against US products comes into force amid market relief at Donald Trump’s move to pause steep reciprocal tariffs around the world

Donald Trump’s trade war with China entered a new phase on Thursday, as Beijing’s 84% retaliatory tariffs came into effect hours after the US president announced a pause of steep reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries except China.

Markets rebounded after Trump’s announcement of the sudden pause, after the most volatile episode in financial markets since the pandemic.

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