Leadnaija
Donald Trump’s 10% tariff on UK products came into force on Saturday, as global stock markets continued to fall in response to the imposition of import taxes.
The FTSE 100 plummeted on Friday in its worst day of trading since the start of the pandemic while markets on Wall Street also tumbled.
Keir Starmer is expected to spend the weekend speaking to foreign leaders about the tariffs, after calls with the prime ministers of Australia and Italy on Friday in which the leaders agreed that a trade war would be “extremely damaging”, reports the PA news agency.
The initial 10% “baseline” tariff took effect at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses at 12.01am ET (0401 GMT), ushering in Trump’s full rejection of the post-second world war system of mutually agreed tariff rates.
Many other countries will see their tariff rates increase above that next week – including the EU which will be hit with a 20% rate. A 25% tariff imposed on all foreign cars imported into the US came into effect on Thursday.
Trading across the world has been hammered in the aftermath of the US president’s announcement at the White House on Wednesday.
Accoding to the PA news agency, London’s top stock market index shed 419.75 points, or 4.95%, to close at 8,054.98 on Friday, the biggest single-day decline since March 2020 when the index lost more than 600 points in one day. The Dow Jones fell 5.5% on Friday as China matched Trump’s tariff rate.
Beijing said it would respond with its own 34% tariff on imports of all US products from 10 April.
All but one stock on the FTSE 100 fell on Friday, with Rolls-Royce, banks and miners among those to suffer the sharpest losses.
