{"id":273072,"date":"2025-04-03T11:59:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T11:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/03\/britain-tried-everything-including-a-royal-invite-it-got-a-10-tariff\/"},"modified":"2025-04-03T11:59:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T11:59:20","slug":"britain-tried-everything-including-a-royal-invite-it-got-a-10-tariff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/03\/britain-tried-everything-including-a-royal-invite-it-got-a-10-tariff\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain Tried Everything, Including a Royal Invite. It Got a 10% Tariff."},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/04\/03\/multimedia\/03uk-tariff-1-zclt\/03uk-tariff-1-zclt-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Britain Tried Everything, Including a Royal Invite. It Got a 10% Tariff.\" title=\"Britain Tried Everything, Including a Royal Invite. It Got a 10% Tariff.\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After all that \u2014 the chummy Oval Office meeting, the extraordinary royal invitation, the paeans to the \u201cspecial relationship\u201d \u2014 Britain and its solicitous prime minister, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/23\/world\/europe\/keir-starmer-trump-interview-uk.html\" title=\"\">Keir Starmer<\/a>, still got swept into President Trump\u2019s tariffs, along with the European Union and other major American trading partners.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Trump imposed his basic tariff of 10 percent on Britain, while hitting the European Union with 20 percent. That drew sighs of relief from Mr. Starmer\u2019s aides, who said the difference would protect thousands of British jobs. They claimed vindication for Mr. Starmer\u2019s charm offensive toward the American president; others said it was a dividend of Britain\u2019s decision to leave the European Union in 2016.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Yet in another sense, it was a Pyrrhic victory: Britain was subject to the same blanket tariff as dozens of countries, even though the United States runs a trade surplus with Britain, according to U.S. statistics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Britain clearly hopes to strike some kind of trade deal with Mr. Trump down the road, which could spare it the tariffs\u2019 lasting effect. On Thursday, Mr. Starmer told business executives that the British would react with \u201ccool and calm heads.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The question is whether he will stick to his strategy \u2014 resisting pressure to impose retaliatory tariffs, for example \u2014 or fall into line with other countries, like Canada, in striking back against the United States. Downing Street said it would not impose tit-for-tat measures while trade talks were underway.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cHis strategy up till now has been perfectly understandable,\u201d said Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King\u2019s College London. \u201cIf I were him, I would have done the same. Now he needs to avoid confrontation for the sake of it, but there\u2019s no point in appeasement either.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Professor Portes said targeted retaliatory moves might make sense as a negotiating tactic. But an across-the-board tariff on American goods, he said, would only deepen the damage to Britain\u2019s economy, which was sputtering even before Mr. Trump announced his measures on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Britain has bargaining chips at its disposal, including reducing <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/02\/business\/economy\/tariffs-foreign-goods-tariffs-us-services.html\" title=\"\">an existing 2 percent tax on digital services<\/a>. Professor Portes said Britain could play hardball in other ways \u2014 for example, acting against X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, Mr. Trump\u2019s ally. Critics have accused the platform of fomenting hate speech, while Mr. Musk has used X to campaign against Mr. Starmer\u2019s government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">If Mr. Starmer fails to extract anything more from Mr. Trump after all his efforts, it could embarrass him politically. But analysts said the bigger threat was the impact on Britain\u2019s slow-growing economy. The Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent fiscal watchdog, said tit-for-tat 20 percent tariffs could shrink the British economy by 1 percent next year. It had forecast growth of 1.9 percent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Britain\u2019s finances are already under extreme pressure. The chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/26\/business\/britain-economy-budget.html\" title=\"\">increased taxes on employers and is planning large welfare cuts<\/a> to cover spending on depleted services and to meet her promise to balance the budget and get debt levels down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Britain, with its small, open economy, is deeply vulnerable to the effects of a trade war. British officials, led by the ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, have negotiated energetically with the White House to avert these tariffs. They did not retaliate against previous tariffs on steel and aluminum, or on vehicles, which came into effect Thursday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Jonathan Reynolds, the business and trade minister who has been involved in the talks, said the watchword was \u201cpragmatism.\u201d On Tuesday, he told the BBC that Britain was in the \u201cbest possible position of any country\u201d to reverse tariffs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Britain runs either an $89 billion trade surplus or a $14.5 billion deficit with the United States, depending on whether one cites British or American statistics. (The difference rests in part on how the two sides treat offshore financial centers like Jersey and Guernsey, which are crown dependencies.) Trade in goods, with which Mr. Trump is most fixated, is relatively in balance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Among the British exporters facing upheaval is the luxury auto industry, as carmakers like Jaguar, Bentley, Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin do not have assembly plants in the United States. More than 40,000 British businesses exported goods to the United States in 2023, according to customs data.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Starmer faces a delicate calculation in deciding how to respond to Mr. Trump. Given the president\u2019s unpopularity in Britain, analysts said Mr. Starmer and his Labour Party could reap a short-term benefit by retaliating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-7\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cStanding up to Trump might suit what he\u2019s been trying to do, which is make Labour the patriotic party,\u201d said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It would also distance Labour from Reform U.K., an anti-immigrant party whose leader, Nigel Farage, has close ties to Mr. Trump. And it would allow Mr. Starmer to draw closer to the European Union, which is expected to impose its own countermeasures.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Responding to Mr. Trump \u201ccould be a short-term political gain,\u201d Professor Fielding said, but for Mr. Starmer in the longer-term, \u201cany kind of tariff war could damage the economy, which will hurt his prospects for re-election.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/03\/world\/europe\/uk-trump-tariffs.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After all that \u2014 the chummy Oval Office meeting, the extraordinary royal invitation, the paeans to the \u201cspecial relationship\u201d \u2014 Britain and its solicitous prime minister, Keir Starmer, still got swept into President Trump\u2019s tariffs, along with the European Union and other major American trading partners. Mr. Trump imposed his basic tariff of 10 percent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/04\/03\/multimedia\/03uk-tariff-1-zclt\/03uk-tariff-1-zclt-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[173709,2942,165435,163575,84420,9643,3096,164053,6388,3959,2923,3960,3487,52,1021,166932,163486],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273074,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273072\/revisions\/273074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}