Category Archives: International trade

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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Gordon Brown calls for ‘economic coalition of the willing’ to tackle Trump tariffs

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Former PM says it is also the moment for the UK to go even further in renewing ties with the EU

Gordon Brown has called for an “economic coalition of the willing” to respond to Donald Trump’s tariffs with coordinated economic policies, including a reduction of interest rates.

The former prime minister also said it was a moment for the UK to go even further in renewing ties with the EU, suggesting it should mean “collaboration that is even more extensive than removing post-Brexit trade barriers”.

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Conservative CDU/CSU and SPD form coalition government in Germany

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Two of the country’s biggest parties freeze out rightwing AfD and prepare for impact of Trump’s new tariffs

Germany’s biggest mainstream parties have sealed an agreement to form a government keeping the far right out of power, as Europe’s top economy struggles to reverse a downturn and gird itself for the potentially catastrophic impact of new US tariffs.

The prospective chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU announced the breakthrough deal with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), which had led the ruling coalition since 2021.

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EU to impose retaliatory 25% tariffs on US goods from almonds to yachts

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Bloc says it ‘considers US tariffs unjustified and damaging, causing economic harm to both sides’

The EU has agreed to impose retaliatory tariffs on €21bn (£18bn) of US goods, targeting farm produce and products from Republican states, in Europe’s first act of retaliation against Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The EU plans to introduce 25% tariffs on scores of goods from almonds to yachts, with the first duties being collected from 15 April, while the bulk apply from 15 May and the remainder from 1 December.

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UK must improve trade relations with Europe amid US tariff wars, warns Reeves

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Chancellor rules out rejoining customs union but says Britain must bolster post-Brexit trade with partners

Donald Trump’s unfolding trade war makes it even more “imperative” for the UK to improve its post-Brexit trading relations with the European Union, Rachel Reeves has said.

The government has ruled out rejoining the EU customs union, but the chancellor has insisted the UK wants to improve its trade relationship with “partners in Europe”, given the difficulties British firms have found in exporting their products around Europe.

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Asian markets fall as Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, including 104% against China, due to take effect – business live

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Stock markets down from Australia to Japan and Taiwan as Trump presses ahead with plans to hit China with huge retaliatory tariffs

Today’s tariffs follow Trump’s 10% tariff on all imports from many countries, including Australia, which came into effect at the weekend.

US customs agents began collecting the unilateral tariff at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses on Saturday. Today’s measures are higher levies on goods from 57 larger trading partners.

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How Trump tariffs could push Vietnam into the arms of China

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The move has sent shock waves through a region of US strategic importance that had respected Trump as tough on Beijing

Vietnam had tried to appease Donald Trump: tariffs on US goods were reduced; regulations were passed to allow Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch its Starlink in the country. The prime minister, Pham Minh Chinh, even joked in January that he would happily “play golf all day long” at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida if it could “bring benefits to my country and my people”.

The strategies do not appear to have worked. Trump has inflicted an extraordinary 46% tariff on Vietnam that threatens to devastate its economic growth plans and undermine relations between the two countries. The tariff has sent shock waves through Vietnam, a manufacturing powerhouse where Trump has always been fairly popular, and across south-east Asia.

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China vows to ‘fight to the end’ against latest Trump tariff threat

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Beijing accuses US of blackmail and adding a ‘mistake on top of a mistake’ as Wednesday deadline for latest levies looms

China’s government says it will “fight to the end” if the US continues to escalate the trade war, after Donald Trump threatened huge additional tariffs in response to China’s retaliatory measures.

On Tuesday, China’s commerce ministry accused the US of “blackmail” and said the US president’s threats of additional 50% tariffs if Beijing did not reverse its own 34% reciprocal tariff were a “mistake on top of a mistake”.

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