Trump’s tariffs could herald one of the most painful episodes in modern times – here’s why | Ed Conway
Of course this is dramatic. Of course markets are slumping.
Because if you take Donald Trump at his word (something investors are now finally beginning to do), he is attempting single-handedly to reverse and uproot decades worth of economic history in the space of a few months.
Because if this really is “the end of globalisation”, as a few politicians, including Keir Starmer, are now calling it, it constitutes one of the most wrenching, painful episodes in modern times.
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To see what I mean, the best place to begin is by pondering the hidden life of the device you’re reading this on. I’m assuming it’s a smartphone, specifically the latest iPhone, but most of the following applies for other smartphones and, indeed, many laptops or desktop computers.
The display was made in South Korea or Japan. The camera module was made by Sony in Japan (who have a particular expertise in this type of specialised silicon that few other companies have been able to match). The batteries (for the latest iPhone at least) are made in India, though these days, the vast majority of the world’s cells are made in China.
On it goes – the memory chips from South Korea, which has a near monopoly on solid state storage silicon. The logic chips – the ones that help the device “think”- made in Taiwan, albeit with intellectual property (IP) from all over the world, including America and even Britain. Some of the chips do indeed come from the US – in particular the modem, though the company behind them (Qualcomm) sometimes manufactures in Taiwan. But there are some from Europe too – most notably the spatial sensor chips that come from Bosch in Germany.
Globalisation is in your hands
If you are looking for an example of “globalisation”, you couldn’t do much better than the smartphone. But even this potted geography lesson understates it because those fabrication plants in Taiwan and South Korea, turning out those silicon chips that help the phone think and remember stuff, are totally dependent on machines made by a company called ASML, based in the Netherlands. Those Dutch machines, in turn, contain components from hundreds of other companies around the world, including in Germany and the US. On it goes.
Nor is this degree of interconnectedness solely to be found in high-tech equipment. The other day, I was up in Scunthorpe at the blast furnaces of British Steel. It turns out the iron they smelt there doesn’t just go into the rails that striate this country. They also make the steel that go into the tracks of Caterpillar trucks.
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That’s right: the iconic tracked diggers – for many people the most American of all things – are all mounted on steel “track shoes” made in the North East of England (the plant is a little further north of Scunthorpe, in Skinningrove).
The further you look around the world of manufactured products, the more you realise that nearly everything you touch on a daily basis has, in the months before it arrived in your life, been on a long trip from factory to factory, taking it all around the world. That device you’re reading this on may say “made in China” on the back, but that’s an enormous over-simplification. It was made more or less everywhere.
This is the way the world works today – like it or not. In a sense it’s the ultimate extension of what Adam Smith discussed back in the earliest days of economics, when he described a “pin factory” where the work of making a simple pin was divided up between different people, with each worker specialising in a particular task rather than trying to make the whole pin themselves.
The swings and roundabouts of globalisation
Today, we have a sort of international division of labour. Today, nearly everyone goes to China to get their batteries. They go to South Korea to get their memory chips. The upshot is these factories have become ever more efficient at making their products. And – here’s where it matters for the rest of us – the price of making and buying this stuff goes down.
Today, the reason one can buy what would once have been classified as a supercomputer for a few hundred pounds is because of this division of labour. Globalisation made everything, from computers to Caterpillar trucks to T-Shirts, that bit cheaper than they would have been had we attempted to manufacture them all in a single country.
Trader Christopher Lagana. Pic: AP
But the ugly side of this economic shift is that those regions that used to do the manufacturing – be it the “rust belt” of America or the Midlands and North East of England – have seen much of their traditional work disappear. And while economists have insisted that cheaper products make everyone better off in net terms, the reality is that these parts of our countries haven’t got better off. They have been hollowed out. And in time, resentment about globalisation has built up – for good reason.
Trump’s aspiration
This is the world we inhabit today. Unpicking it will be phenomenally difficult and phenomenally expensive. Trying to relocate all those functions – factories and labour markets with expertise that has built up over decades – would be incredibly difficult and would take a long time. But that seems, as far as anyone can tell, to be the aspiration of Donald Trump. That appears to be the objective of his tariff policy.
Up until now, most investors had assumed that the president wasn’t entirely serious about this – that he merely intended to scare a few Asian companies into opening factories in key swing states. And who knows – that may well turn out to be the case. But he certainly seems more serious this time around – and less fazed by the negative market reaction.
In the meantime, we are left with those tariffs.
Costs will go up
Think back to that iPhone. Think back to those Caterpillar tracks. All those components now face swinging tariffs when they arrive in the US. That will push up the cost of buying pretty much anything in the US and will accordingly push down the demand for those goods. And since America is the world’s consumer of last resort – the biggest importer of goods anywhere – that has an enormous bearing on demand around the world.
So, yes, of course, this is dramatic. Of course, markets are slumping. No one knows what the US president will do next. But either way, what happened last week in the Rose Garden will reverberate for a long time to come.
Business
Inflation surprisingly continues to fall but expect an April rebound due to across-the-board bill hikes
Inflation fell more than expected and for the second month in a row, official figures show.
The consumer price index (CPI) measure of inflation fell to 2.6% in March, down from 2.8% in February and 3% in January, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.
It means prices are rising at the slowest pace since December and closest to the Bank of England’s 2% target.
The rate is also lower than expected by economists polled by Reuters, who anticipated inflation of 2.7%.
But the drop is likely to be short-lived as a raft of bill rises kicked in at the start of April.
Energy, water, and council tax bills rose throughout the UK at the start of this month.
Why did inflation fall?
It was a fall in fuel costs, thanks to lower oil prices that led to the surprise drop, combined with the unchanged food price rise.
The price of games, toys and hobbies, as well as data processing equipment, all fell.
These drops counteracted a “strong” rise in the price of clothes, the ONS said.
The late timing of Easter also meant comparing March 2024 – as the ONS does with its annual inflation rise figure – with March 2025 isn’t comparing like with like.
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Easter and the associated school break bring things like higher airfares and hotel costs, something that was not seen last month as the feast takes place in April this year.
What does this mean for interest rates?
All measures of inflation fell, in a boost to the Bank of England as they mull interest rate cuts.
A key way of assessing price rises, core inflation, which excludes volatile price items like fuel and food, dropped to 3.4%.
It’s closely watched by the rate setters at the Bank of England, who meet next month and are widely expected to make borrowing less expensive by bringing interest rates down to 4.25%.
Another important measure – services inflation – dropped to 4.7% from 5% in February. As a predominantly services-based economy, a drop in that rate is good news for central bankers and households.
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Inflation data, combined with the fact job vacancies are at pre-pandemic levels for the first time since 2021, has meant traders are now expecting four interest rate cuts this year, which would bring the base interest rate to 3.5% by December.
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has said it is “likely” that British Steel will be nationalised.
However he also stressed the importance of finding a private sector partner for the business because the scale of capital required for steel transformation was “very significant, even with government support”.
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It comes after he appeared to row back on his claim that he would not bring a Chinese company into the steel sector again after ministers had to urgently step in to save the British Steel plant in Scunthorpe.
Mr Reynolds, speaking to reporters in the Lincolnshire town after raw materials arrived to keep the site running, said that nationalisation was the “likely option at this stage”.
He added: “What we are now going to do, having secured both control of the site and the supply of raw materials, so the blast furnaces won’t close in a matter of days, is work on the future.
“We’ve got the ownership question, which is pressing.
“I was clear when I gave the speech in parliament – we know there is a limited lifespan of the blast furnaces, and we know that what we need for the future is a private sector partner to come in and work with us on that transformation and co-fund that transformation.”
The government passed emergency legislation on Saturday to take over British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant, the last in the UK capable of producing virgin steel, after talks with its Chinese owners, Jingye, broke down.
The company recently cancelled orders for supplies of the raw materials needed to keep the blast furnaces running, sparking a race against time to keep it operational.
While those materials have been secured, questions remain about the long-term future of British Steel and whether it will be fully nationalised or the private sector will get involved.
Reynolds rows back
Mr Reynolds earlier said he would look at Chinese firms “in a different way” following the row but did not rule out their involvement completely.
He previously told Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, that he would not “personally bring a Chinese company into our steel sector” again, describing steel as a “sensitive area” in the UK.
However, industry minister Sarah Jones took a different position on Tuesday morning, telling Sky News she is “not ruling out” the possibility of another Chinese partner.
She said having a pragmatic relationship with Beijing, the world’s second-biggest economy, is still important and stringent tests would apply “to a Chinese company as they would to any other company”.
Asked for clarity on his position during a visit to the port of Immingham, where materials from two ships were being unloaded and transported to the plant, Mr Reynolds said: “I think we’ve got to recognise that steel is a sensitive sector.
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“A lot of the issues in the global economy with steel come from production and dumping of steel products… so I think you would look at a Chinese firm in a different way.
“But I’m really keen to stress the action we’ve taken here was to step in because it was one specific company that I thought wasn’t acting in the UK’s national interest, and we had to take the action we did.”
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China relationship ‘really important’
The materials that arrived on Tuesday, including coking coal and iron, are enough to keep the furnaces running for weeks, the Department for Business and Trade said.
They are needed because if the furnaces cool down too much, the molten iron solidifies and blocks the furnaces, making it extremely difficult and expensive to restart them.
‘Chinese ownership truly dreadful’
Opposition politicians have accused China of sabotage to increase reliance on its steel products, and want the country to be prevented from future dealings not only with steel but any UK national infrastructure.
Veteran Tory MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the government needs to define which industries are “strategic” – and prevent China from being allowed to invest in such sectors.
Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller said reverting to Chinese ownership would be like finding “your house ransacked and then leaving your doors unlocked”.
Raw materials for the Scunthorpe steel plant
Coking coal is unloaded at Immingham Port. Pic: Reuters
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage took the same position, saying the thought the government “could even contemplate another Chinese owner of British steel is truly dreadful”, and that he would not have China “in our nuclear program, anywhere near our telecoms or anything else”.
“They are not our friends,” he added.
Number 10 said on Monday that it was not aware of any “sabotage” at the plant and there is no block on Chinese companies.
The Chinese embassy has urged the British government not to “politicise” the situation by “linking it to security issues”, saying it is “an objective fact that British steel companies have generally encountered difficulties in recent years”.
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Jingye reported losses of around £700k a day at Scunthorpe, which will now come at a cost to the taxpayer.
During Tuesday morning’s interview round, Ms Jones said the government had offered Jingye money in return for investment and “we think that there is a model there that we could replicate with another private sector company”.
But she said there “isn’t another private sector company there waiting in the wings” currently, and that it may be a “national solution” that is needed.
She said “all of the options” were expensive but that it would have cost more to the taxpayer to allow the site to shut.
A YouGov poll shows the majority of the public (61%) support the government’s decision to nationalise British Steel.
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