Browsing: Economy

With the huge and painful tariffs that Donald Trump announced on Thursday, “Tariff Man” is acting like a paranoid 12-year-old bully who is convinced that everyone has wronged him, and he wants revenge. But the president’s instrument of revenge – massive tariffs – is going to do serious damage to the US and global economies. Stock market investors are convinced that’s the case, with Wall Street and world stock markets losing trillions of dollars in value in recent days as a result of Trump’s obsession.The president has escalated his risky, vengeful trade war even though the US economy was in strong shape when he took office – the jobless rate was just 4.1%, inflation was below 3% and US economic growth was the strongest in the industrial world, with its stock market at record levels. So it’s unclear whether the US economy needed the shock treatment that Trump is inflicting. The price increases resulting from his tariffs – which are a tax on imports – will cost the average American family $3,800 a year, according to the Budget Lab at Yale.Trump is right that the number of manufacturing jobs is down substantially from decades ago, and he is intent on getting that number back up. But he’s taking a very high-stakes bet that he can significantly increase the number of factory jobs, even as many economists say the horses have left that barn, and it is too late or will be too painful to do much about it. In 1979, the US had a record 19.5m factory jobs. That number fell to 17m in 2001 and to 12.7m today (having risen by 600,000 during Joe Biden’s presidency).Trump’s new tariffs result from a combination of impulsiveness, impetuousness and ignorance, although some economists say that idiocy and economic illiteracy also play a big part. Paul Krugman says that Trump’s tariffs reflect the “whims of a mad king”, adding that the administration’s case for tariffs is “completely incoherent”, as it insists that the tariffs won’t raise prices but will still raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.The tariffs that Trump announced on Thursday are staggering – 50% on tiny Lesotho, 49% on Cambodia, 46% on Vietnam, 34% on China, 32% on Taiwan, 24% on Japan and 20% on European Union countries. These percentages were arrived at not by careful, probing analysis that took months, but by some slapdash, Keystone Kops math.It would be generous to say it’s the one-eyed leading the blind. Rather, it’s an economically blind, impetuous president leading a mum, intimidated Republican-controlled Congress. One of the tragedies here is that many congressional Republicans see the grievous damage Trump is doing, but they’re too craven to speak out and risk Trump’s and Elon Musk’s social media wrath.Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, is predicting disaster. He says that as a result of Trump’s tariffs a recession “will hit imminently and extend until next year”. Zandi says that economic growth could fall by 2 percentage points, while the jobless rate could leap to a very painful 7.5%. On Friday, the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, also sounded the alarm, saying that Trump’s tariffs could cause even slower economic growth and higher inflation than originally expected.With Trump’s 50% tariff rate on Lesotho, 46% on Vietnam and 37% on Bangladesh, those countries – with their export-dependent apparel industries – will suffer terribly. There will be huge layoffs and no doubt an increase in hunger and immiseration – just as Trump-Musk’s tremendous foreign aid cuts at USAID have already resulted in increased hunger and deaths. And one has to wonder: by pummeling poor, apparel-producing countries such as Lesotho, Cambodia, Vietnam and Bangladesh, what is Trump trying to achieve? Does he want to bring back to the US low-paying, garment-industry jobs making jeans and sneakers?Carefully crafted tariffs can be helpful. They can be used to help build important industries or prevent the wholesale destruction of industries due to other countries’ bad behavior, like China’s improperly subsidizing its industries or dumping goods on the world market far below the cost of production. Unfortunately, Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs are not a scalpel designed to help specific industries, but rather a blunderbuss mess, hitting everyone and everything, including US consumers and industries. Let’s not forget that the tariffs will raise costs at many US manufacturers and make them less competitive by, for instance, greatly increasing the price of imported steel and auto parts.The tariffs that Trump is imposing are even greater than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which are widely seen as having worsened the Great Depression. Krugman noted that Trump’s tariffs could also do serious damage because “imports as a share of the [US] economy are three times what they were in the 1920s”.Even if Trump’s tariffs were to do what he hopes – create another million or two factory jobs – the cost would be immense. A recession. Millions of families hurt by higher prices. Trillions and trillions in lost stock market value. Far worse relations with our close allies and other countries. Opening the door to Trump’s adversary, China, significantly improving its trade and economic relations with other countries. Plus, a severe economic shock to many poorer nations.And it’s not at all certain that Trump’s tariffs will create a million or more manufacturing jobs: US economic growth and jobs will be hurt by a possible tariff-induced recession, trade retaliation from other countries, a long-term loss of markets as traditional trading partners turn away from the US, and a possible long-term decline in US industrial competitiveness as tariff protections enable inefficient companies to succeed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s big hope is that corporations will build new factories and create more factory jobs in the US, but corporate executives won’t do that unless they’re convinced that there’s economic stability and predictability. They’re not blind to how capricious and unpredictable Trump is, and they know that he loves to play master dealmaker and win concessions from other countries and then immediately slash their tariffs. Trump’s team says these tariffs will be here for the long haul, but can corporate CEOs count on those claims when they’re deciding to spend $400m on a new factory?In announcing his huge new tariffs last Thursday, Trump proclaimed: “April 2, 2025 will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.” As usual, Trump failed to note some extremely important things.Although he won’t admit it, the US is already very wealthy. If he were truly serious about fixing the economy and making it fairer, he wouldn’t be rushing to give massive tax cuts to the ultra-rich and sparking fears of vast cuts Medicaid and food stamps that struggling American families rely on.What Trump and his team will never admit is that 2 April 2025 may for ever be remembered as the day the US economy took a grievous, Trump-induced tumble toward recession and higher prices. And not that Trump cares, but 2 April 2025 may also be remembered overseas for creating tremendous pain for struggling workers from Bangladesh to Lesotho to Honduras.

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues

Nobody likes to admit we need marketing, but the discipline has always been necessary to match people with the products and services that fulfil their needs and desires.It started simply enough, with us focusing primarily on brands’ features and tangible benefits. But as consumer society evolved, we moved on to symbolic benefits: identities, lifestyles. Finally, we began selling values: an ideology that hit its zenith between 2015 and 2022 in the era of “brand purpose”.It’s here we started to lose the plot. Brands no longer sought to be loved – they demanded to be supported, treated as movements rather than commercial entities. Do you stand with Nike against racial injustice? Do you support Hellmann’s in the fight against food waste?By making purchasing decisions moral declarations, we sold the idea that we could self-correct through consumption. And brands were our champions at the centre of it all: our profitable agents of social reform.And yet a decade on from the start of this period, in every conceivable domain, from the environment, to LGBTQ+ protections, to women’s bodily autonomy, to immigration and multiculturalism, it seems we’re skirting closer and closer to the fascist ideology we claimed to have defeated in 1945.Every week, we’re met with news of brands adjusting to that new order, either scaling back their DEI or environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments or abandoning them all together.How did it come to this?It’s easy to blame the Trumps, the Tates, the podcasters, the broligarchy. Less easy is to examine the conditions that created them – and our own complicity within the professional class.The contradictions of the brand purpose era are most apparent when looked at from the view of the average person. Social progress once came hand-in-hand with economic progress. Now, instead, social progress has been offered as a substitute for economic progress.For the better part of the last decade, both consumers and employees have observed a marked contrast between multinational brands promoting wholesale social transformation, with bold proclamations for equity and justice for marginalised communities, while simultaneously being some of the single greatest contributors to the decline in living standards across the vast majority of the western world.They’ve seen messaging grow increasingly heavy-handed, couched in shame, or used as a tactic for plain obfuscation. And they’ve asked the consumer to bear the cost of transition, often charging more for objectively worse products (hello, paper shopping bags).It’s this contradiction that’s been so effectively exploited by the far right.The appropriation and weaponisation of “woke” was supercharged by the narrative that leftist thinking had infiltrated the highest echelon of corporations. Painting the two as bedfellows has allowed a new breed of conservatives to occupy the position of “counter-cultural” – the net effect being large swathes of young people supporting authoritarian or ethno-nationalist political movements. In a bizarre inversion of reality, it’s somehow become punk to champion the same power structures that have dominated society for centuries.What is saddest about this turn of events is that it was entered with good intentions. The brand purpose era was, in many ways, marketers trying to reconcile their roles such that they could feel they were effecting positive change even while playing the corporate game. Instead, it became yet another cautionary tale in capitalism’s ability to absorb its critiques and repackage them as aesthetics to be sold on a supermarket shelf.Through the rear window it’s easy to see that the backlash was inevitable: if progressive values could so easily be commodified as a tool for selling mayonnaise, why shouldn’t those values be treated with the same fickleness as condiment preferences?This piece isn’t intended as a call out to any individual. We all live under this system. To make a living means we are all in some way complicit. But as marketers, we must reckon with how we’ve trivialised activism by turning it into comms strategy, how we’ve co-opted movements only to abandon them when the winds changed.The responsibility we bear now is undoing the lesson we inadvertently taught consumers over this era. Structural reform can’t be achieved through consumption choices – unfortunately, we’re all going to have to get dirt under our fingernails.If this all sounds a bit doom and gloom, let me provide a reason to be optimistic. After two decades of misplaced optimism, we have entered a period the writer and “luxury memeologist” Edmond Lau has termed “the dark mode shift”. In this “mask-off” era, everyone’s true intentions have come to light. Your boss is back to looking like your boss, not Adam Sandler on a coffee run; your office is back to looking like an office, not a college common room.And brands are back to their true role: creating fiction and spectacle to grease the wheels of consumption. Done right, I believe that fiction can still produce moments of extraordinary clarity and beauty.But there’s a line to be drawn between what we do and where meaningful progress really comes from: grassroots movements, political organising, policy reform. Brands’ swift exit grants oxygen for more authentic acts of resistance to return to centre stage.And if we’re not prepared to sacrifice profit in support of those causes, then perhaps our most radical act is one of humility – wielding our influence with greater care and consciousness than before.Here’s to proclaiming: the revolution will not go better with Pepsi.

Eugene Healey is brand strategy consultant, educator and creator

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Donald Trump’s vast overhaul of US trade policy this week has called time on an era of globalization, alarming people, governments and investors around the world. No one should have been surprised, the US president said.The announcement of 10% to 50% tariffs on US trading partners tanked stock markets after Trump unveiled a “declaration of economic independence” so drastic it drew comparison with Britain’s exit from the European Union – Brexit.But Trump, who won re-election promising that tariffs would make America great again, has advocated for the return of widespread tariffs with “great consistency” for decades. “I’ve been talking about it for 40 years,” he noted in the White House Rose Garden.Many businesses, economists and politicians believe Trump’s trade plan is wrongheaded, flawed and risky. Some have even suggested it might have been written by ChatGPT. But he is unquestionably right when it comes to the number of decades he has argued for it.“This is so unusual for Trump. He’s a conventional politician in one way: he doesn’t believe in much deeply,” Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. Tariffs are different. “This one thing, he seems to deeply believe in.”As far back as 1987, when a fame-hungry real estate tycoon took out full-page ads in newspapers, the now president called for such a strategy. Other major economies are the “greatest profit machines ever created”, he argued way back when. “‘Tax’ these wealthy nations, not America.”Eight years after the start of his first term and just 10 weeks into his second, he has finally set about seriously delivering that dream – and cast aside warnings it may deteriorate into a nightmare.On the campaign trail last year, Trump made no secret of his vision: tariffs would unshackle the US economy, he promised, revitalize its industrial heartlands and unlock a gigantic financial windfall for the federal government.But after pitching this big, beautiful and bold reconstruction of the global economic order, the early actions of the second Trump administration were strikingly smaller, messier and altogether more hesitant than trailed.The focus, at first, narrowed dramatically from the world to just a handful of nations: China, Canada and Mexico. While China was hit hard, sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico were interrupted by a dizzying array of deadlines, delays and dispensations.Tariffs were increased on steel and aluminum. But Trump’s trade agenda was largely characterized by threats and spats: rhetoric, but not reality.On Wednesday, dubbed “liberation day” by Trump and his aides, he did his best to draw a sharp line under weeks of wavering, doubt and confusion – and imposed the universal and “reciprocal” tariffs he pledged so many times to introduce while fighting to regain the White House.Defying the stark forecasts and concerns of mainstream economists and corporations, Trump went with his gut. “That was true of the Brexiteers, was it not? They really believed it deeply from the core of their souls,” said Sabato.At one point during his address, Trump switched from president to historian. “In 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax,” he said, setting the stage for a sharp reduction in tariffs on foreign goods. “Citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government.”Decades of US prosperity “came to a very abrupt end” with the Great Depression from 1929, Professor Trump opined before his class of aides, cabinet secretaries and supporters. “It would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy,” he claimed. “It would have been a much different story.”Actual historians took issue with this account. “It’s what we would call a lie. False. Not true,” said Andrew Cohen, professor of history in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. “He’s wrong. No one thinks that. Even conservative economists don’t think that. Even protectionist economists don’t think that.”Months into the depression, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 – which hiked tariffs on hundreds of imports in a bid to boost the US economy – is widely considered to have prolonged, and even deepened, the crisis. No other president has tried the same tactic again – until now.The swift rebuttal to Trump’s analysis of the past was surpassed only by the response to his ambitious predictions for the future.The president has promised a new Golden Age, with millions of new jobs, billions more dollars’ worth of US exports and trillions of dollars in tariff revenues. Outside his administration, skepticism is high.“The Trump tariffs mark a liberation from the benefits of free trade for American businesses and consumers,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University, and a former official at the International Monetary Fund. “Trump has taken the hatchet to trade with practically every major US trading partner, sparing few allies or rivals,” he added, with action that will be “severely disruptive to the US economy, with the effects felt by American consumers and businesses in practically every industry”.Who pays the price? The rest of the world, according to the president and his aides. But import tariffs are paid by the companies and consumers that import the goods from the rest of the world – in this case, US companies and consumers – rather than the overseas companies exporting them.Trump’s tariffs will increase the average US household’s costs by $3,800, according to the Yale Budget Lab.“These tariff increases are likely to be some of the biggest tax increases in US history and will result (if fully implemented) in some of the highest tariff rates the US has ever seen,” wrote Jeremy Horpedahl, adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, who noted that they could exceed the post-Smoot-Hawley levels of 1930.“Like all tariffs, some large portion of these new levies will be paid by US consumers and businesses in the form of higher prices,” added Horpedahl.If Trump is right, and his decades-old dream revives the world’s largest economy, enriching its citizens and transforming its industrial base into a manufacturing powerhouse, his administration will be one of the most successful in modern memory.But if he’s wrong, the very Americans who elected him to rapidly bring down the cost of living are likely to be hit hardest.“It’s either going to be Trump and his team or it’s going to be a large majority of experienced mainstream economists,” said Sabato. “I know where my bet is.”

The spring months are typically the busiest of the year in the housing market as buyers mobilise and sunshine adds to a property’s kerb appeal.However, today’s buyers – and those remortgaging – need deeper pockets than a few years ago. Not only does the average mortgage rate start with a “5” but borrowers face hefty arrangement fees to secure the best deals. These are the fees paid to lenders purely to secure a certain rate, and come on top of any conveyancing or broker fees.Over the past five years the average product fee on a fixed-rate mortgage has risen by £81 to £1,121, according to the data firm Moneyfacts. At the same time, the proportion of deals available without a fee has fallen from 41% to 36%. There are also fewer deals offering sweeteners such as cashback.The highest fee Guardian Money found was £3,995 for products offered by Bespoke Bank of Ireland, although the lender specialises in “complex” cases. However, big high street lenders such as Santander, Halifax and Barclays all have deals with a hefty £1,999 price tag attached.The Moneyfacts finance expert Rachel Springall says borrowers who locked into a cheap fix back in 2020 and are hoping to refinance will find “mortgage fees have been on the rise. Outside headline-grabbing low rates, borrowers need to check the overall cost of any mortgage, which includes any fees or cost-saving incentives.”On top of the product fee, there could also be a valuation and legal costs to consider, especially if you are buying a home rather than remortgaging.With nearly 7,000 residential mortgages on the market there are lots of products to choose from but “many have higher product fees”, says Chris Sykes, the technical director at the mortgage broker Private Finance.“What lenders tend to do is offer a few tiers of product – perhaps there is a 4.25% with a £1,495 product fee, then a 4.5% with a £999 product fee, and a 4.75% with no product fee,” he says.View image in fullscreen“Whether it is worth paying this product fee or not is just down to the maths of it, what the loan amount is and how the interest saving would offset that product fee. Product fees can often be added to the loan amount but then the interest payable on those added fees needs to be considered, too.”To illustrate the point, Sykes costed one lender’s range based on a £450,000 loan over 25 years, with a 75% loan-to-value. The two-year fix range is 4.33% (£1,495 fee), 4.38% (£995 fee) and 4.54% (no fee). For five years it is 4.24% (£1,495 fee), 4.29% (£995 fee) and 4.46% (no fee).The two-year deal at 4.33% has monthly repayments of £2,459 and total payments of £60,488. At 4.38%, monthly payments rise to £2,471 but the total repaid comes down slightly to £60,292. At 4.54%, the monthly repayments rise again to £2,512 but the overall paid falls to £60,275.“Some people could be attracted to the lower rates but then actually it would be better for them to pay slightly more monthly and save themselves the fee,” he says.On the same loan over five years, monthly and overall it works out cheaper to pay a big fee. At 4.24%, you pay £2,436 a month and £147,614 in total. At 4.29%, it moves up to £2,448 a month and £147,870 overall. For the 4.46% no-fee deal, it is £2,491 a month but the total repaid is much higher overall at £149,463.In a market where the average UK home costs about £270,000 – and nearly £530,000 in London – the best deal ultimately will depend on your individual circumstances.“There is often a trade-off between rate and fee,” says Mark Harris, the chief executive of the mortgage broker SPF Private Clients. He gives the example of two Nationwide five-year deals available to borrowers with a 60% loan-to-value: 4.02% with a £1,499 fee and a no-fee deal at 4.20%. “Essentially, if you borrow more than £250,000, you are financially better off taking the lower rate/higher fee combination,” he says. “For a smaller loan, the higher rate with a lower fee is a better deal.”View image in fullscreenIt is estimated that, on average, 800,000 homeowners with a fixed-rate deal with a rate of 3% or below will see their deals end this year. This means many homeowners have not yet been exposed to higher borrowing costs. At the time of writing, the average two-year fix is at 5.33%, while a five-year deal is 5.18%, according to Moneyfacts. The average two-year tracker rate is 5.20%.Sykes gives the example of a client who bought their first home nearly five years ago with a £480,000 loan on a 25-year term. Their five-year deal at 1.39% meant monthly payments of £1,895.“We are assessing options for them to remortgage on to now, they have a current balance of about £397,000 and a remaining term of 20 years,” he says. “But with rates now we are looking more like 4.2% on a new five-year product and payments up to about £2,449, so an increase of £554 per month.”“Fortunately for these clients the property has increased in value over this time, and they’ve both had promotions at work, so can cover this substantial increase, but things will definitely be tighter for them,” he says. “They considered extending the mortgage term to help lower payments but decided against this.”David Hollingworth, an associate director at the broker L&C Mortgages, suggests that lenders have introduced higher fee products to “try to squeeze the rate down a little further”.He says: “Bigger fee deals are really a result of a very competitive market and lenders looking to do something different. A big fee could work for those with a bigger mortgage, where a lower rate will outweigh the fee. But many will be better to focus on keeping fees down, even if that means taking a slightly higher rate.”

When Jonathan Reynolds gathered with officials around the large television screen in his office to watch Donald Trump unleash his global trade war, he knew little more than anyone else about what was to come.It was Wednesday night and the US president was about to upend a century of global trade with the imposition of sweeping taxes on US imports from around the world.Moments before Trump sauntered on stage, Reynolds had been told to expect a universal baseline tariff of 10% – but he did not know whether anything else would be imposed on top. The expectation in government was that the UK would be hit with a 20% rate, which the Treasury watchdog had warned could wipe 1% off UK GDP.As Trump brought out his sandwich board of global tariffs, Reynolds and his team shared the frustration of many viewers across the world – the board kept slipping behind the White House lectern and obscuring the all-important figures next to countries’ names.It quickly became clear that the UK’s rate was 10%, lower than the 20% rate for the EU – but the same baseline as the US had imposed on countries including Brazil and Afghanistan. Within minutes, Downing Street described this as a “vindication” of Keir Starmer’s approach.“When we heard it was a flat 10% there was some relief because it could have been so much worse,” one source said. “It also meant that they were true to their word about where we stood. That trust will be really important going forward.”No 10 has been criticised for “sucking up” to Trump but getting little in return, but government sources argue that the tariff regime could have been substantially more damaging for the UK if they had not worked to develop good relations and put forward their own arguments.They stress that the US was minded to include VAT – which has a standard rate of 20% and has been much maligned by Trump – in their calculations, but that Starmer made the case against this directly and publicly when he visited the White House in February. “We were able to talk them down,” a source said.Trump has long been an advocate of tariffs – once describing them as the most beautiful word in the dictionary – and his promise to impose them was a central plank of his presidential election campaign. In anticipation, Downing Street developed a defensive strategy that revolved around building a strong relationship with Trump’s White House – despite clear political differences – and launching talks to strike an economic deal that would secure tariff exemptions.Trade talks between the UK and US began soon after Trump’s inauguration, before the prime minister visited Washington in February, with the goal of agreeing a relatively narrow deal focused on advanced technologies. Talks intensified before Reynolds’ own visit to meet Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, just over two weeks ago.UK officials were assured by their US counterparts that they were in a strong position to negotiate a trade deal with Washington. “By then we knew what the faultlines were, and we were broadly there, so we just had some details to thrash out,” an official said.View image in fullscreenThe two key figures leading the negotiations are Reynolds and Varun Chandra, a corporate strategist turned senior No 10 aide known as the prime minister’s “business whisperer”. Officials have been impressed by how Chandra has navigated the US administration. “He just gets them, and they get him. The talks have been much more corporate in tone than trade negotiations usually are. That’s his world,” one said.A senior trade department official, Kate Joseph, and Starmer’s economic international affairs adviser, Michael Ellam, have been working behind the scenes at home to get the Whitehall machine ready. Multiple scenarios were drawn up depending on what tariff regime Trump imposed.Initially, the UK side was hopeful a deal could be done that would secure a carve-out from tariffs before they were announced on 2 April. Government sources cited Trump’s pledge to “be nice” to countries that had balanced trade with the US. “He wants to have this big moment without much nuance,” one official said. “But we’d obviously like some nuance on this.”All that changed on Thursday 27 March, less than a week before Trump’s announcement, when UK officials were told by US contacts that “world tariff day means *world* tariff day” – and the UK would be included. The British negotiating team understood they would be in the ‘friendly’ camp, but had no idea what that would actually mean. They spent the weekend finalising their scenario planning for all potential outcomes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking onboard Air Force One last Sunday, Trump told reporters that the tariffs would apply to “all countries, so let’s see what happens”. Stock markets across the globe tumbled. It was all hands on deck. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, spoke to the US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, before telling the cabinet on Tuesday to brace themselves for the tariffs hitting the UK economy.Ministers redoubled their engagement with businesses: Reynolds held a succession of calls and, hours before Trump spoke on Wednesday, Reeves gathered senior executives from companies including Aston Martin, KPMG, Diageo, Starling Bank and Shell in Downing Street to prepare the ground.When the announcement came, despite the measure of relief about the 10% rate on the UK, government sources admitted some of the tariff levels imposed – including up to 54% for China – were “terrifying”. There was particular concern over the EU – the UK’s biggest trading partner – being hit with a 20% rate given the inevitable knock-on effects on the British economy.Starmer hosted business leaders for breakfast on Thursday morning, while Reynolds took to the airwaves tasked with projecting a sense of calm and stability. In the Commons, the trade secretary announced he would take the first step towards retaliation in case the UK and US did not agree a deal.View image in fullscreenOne official admitted the US was “upending the system”. Starmer said on Thursday that it was “not just a short-term tactical exercise, it is the beginning of a new era” for the world economy. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, went further on Friday, saying he regretted “the return to protectionism in the United States, something that we’ve not seen for nearly a century”.Insiders hope that once the tariffs come into force on Saturday, Trump’s team will have the bandwidth to return to trade talks with the UK – potentially early next week. These would initially take place remotely but could quickly return to face-to-face. Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday that he was open to negotiating tariffs with countries that offered something “phenomenal”.At the same time, the prime minister and chancellor are lining up calls with their international counterparts over the weekend to discuss the tariffs and how they plan to respond.“We have been preparing for all eventualities. The deal that we’ve been discussing with the US is progressing, and we’re working closely with businesses. Nothing is off the table when it comes to acting in our national interest,” said a Downing Street source. “This is a new era that demands we go further and faster on the work we’ve been doing on growth, reform and changing our economy. Every decision we take in coming days and weeks will be guided solely by our national interest.”Another source said: “Do we wish it wasn’t happening? Yes. Have we said that to them? Yes. This isn’t what we wanted. But they have a very specific worldview and they’re working in what they think is their nation’s best interest. We’re doing the same.”

On the morning of Valentine’s Day 2022, Hannah Hunt stood at the gates of Downing Street to announce the start of a new kind of climate campaign, one that would eschew mere protest and instead move into “civil resistance”.Last week, three years and thousands of arrests later, in a neat tie-up exemplary of Just Stop Oil’s (JSO) love of media-savvy stunts, Hunt went to the same spot again – this time to announce the group would be “hanging up the hi-vis”.In the history of UK climate activism, there has been perhaps no more polarising a campaign. Derided as “eco-zealots” in the Daily Mail and condemned as “selfish” by the Sun, which even sent a reporter to testify against them in court, JSO is as likely to be remembered for the chaos it caused as for its victories.The group’s tactics of blocking roads, halting sports events and targeting national treasures enraged politicians, pundits and the public alike. By 2023, polling showed 64% of people disapproved of JSO.Despite the demonisation, the impact of this relatively small group of peaceful protesters is in little doubt. Its campaigners kept the issue of new fossil fuel production on the agenda of even the least environmentally minded news outlets.Indeed in the group’s parting statement, members claimed to have been “one of the most successful civil resistance campaigns in recent history”, saying that their key demand for a moratorium on new oil and gas licences was “now government policy”.And perhaps more significantly, JSO proved there was a group of people in the UK prepared to endure public opprobrium – and often prison – to raise the alarm about a crisis that experts warn threatens the future of humanity. So why stop now?For Graeme Hayes, a sociologist at Aston University, who has spent years covering Just Stop Oil, the end of the campaign came as no surprise. It followed the same pattern as its forerunners, Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Insulate Britain.“It is in the DNA of these organisations that they do not carry on long term,” Hayes said. “Not least because the people involved, even in the best of worlds, tend to find that they exhaust their energies, that the constant wider social conflict they face is intense and takes its toll.”View image in fullscreenThat wider social impact has been intensified by the introduction of some of the most draconian laws around the right to protest in UK history. In 2022, MPs passed the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, a direct response to XR’s mass protests, giving police an armoury of new powers to impose conditions on demonstrations.The following year, in a direct response to the likes of JSO, parliament passed the Public Order Act, creating a series of offences targeting direct action, as the government simultaneously lowered the threshold of disruption at which police could intervene in a protest from “serious” to “more than minor”.At the same time, courts are handing down increasingly harsh sentences, prosecutors have sought more severe conspiracy charges, and the government has taken action in the courts to narrow the scope of defences available to protesters.Katy Watts, a lawyer at the human rights organisation Liberty, said: “That has all created this climate in which it is harder to engage in protest, particularly some of those specific direct action tactics. It’s harder to lawfully demonstrate on the streets, and the penalties or the consequences for committing protest offences have become more and more severe.”The cost to activists has been substantial. According to JSO’s data, over three years their supporters were arrested about 3,300 times. Seven are serving jail sentences, of up to four years, and a further eight are on remand awaiting sentencing. “We think there have been 180 instances of remand and/or prison sentences handed down,” a JSO spokesperson said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenMore may yet be sent to jail. Trials for JSO actions are scheduled through 2025 and 2026 and, for those who took action with Insulate Britain, into 2027.Roger Hallam, the co-founder of XR, Insulate Britain and JSO, is one of those who has been at the sharp end of the state crackdown. He was jailed for five years for a conspiracy to block traffic on the M25. His sentence was recently reduced to four years on appeal but he remains behind bars.Reflecting on the end of JSO, Hallam told the Guardian that building the group had been “the most fulfilling period of my life, working in a culture of dedication to the common good, rooted in respect, service, and trust.“While our impact may seem marginal and the crisis worsens, this is not due to a lack of effort – thousands have been arrested, hundreds imprisoned, facing the most repressive laws in modern UK history.”Many within the movement believe they are at a similar inflection point to the one activists faced after the first wave of XR protests, when the radicals who went on to found Insulate Britain and JSO split from those who felt the need to moderate their actions.Some groups, such as Shut the System, have departed from the model of accountability espoused by JSO and XR in favour of a clandestine approach, inspired by counterparts in Europe and the writings of the radical social ecologist Andreas Malm.View image in fullscreenOther groups have taken a different tack. The Citizens Arrest Network, which has non-violently targeted the chief executives of polluting companies, aims to shift the legal accountability away from activists and to those it sees as responsible for the crisis.“I think something like XR would be more difficult now,” said Nuala Lam, a longtime climate justice activist who was involved with XR and now helps run the Citizens Arrest Network. “The possibility of having a broad diverse movement where people from different backgrounds can get involved at different levels has been severely limited.”Several people involved in XR and JSO told the Guardian the challenge now was to mobilise the “climate-aware majority” – the large proportion of the population that is aware of the coming crisis, are deeply afraid about what it means for their own lives and that of their children, but are yet to take action.View image in fullscreenSam Nadel, the director of Social Change Lab, which researches the impact of protest, sees a continuing role for radical groups. He says groups such as JSO can have a “radical flank effect”, driving support for more moderate counterparts.“In our 2024 Nature paper, we found that awareness of a Just Stop Oil protest made people more likely to support Friends of the Earth,” Nadel said. “People exposed to Just Stop Oil’s actions were also more likely to engage in pro-climate activities like volunteering, donating to charity, or contacting their MP. The message? Even unpopular groups can have positive and widespread ripple effects.”Hallam acknowledges that despite the efforts and sacrifice of those involved in JSO the climate crisis is getting worse. However, he said the true failure lay not with activists but with “the liberal class – journalists, doctors, lawyers, civil servants – who refused to stand by their professed values and engage in civil resistance.“Now, the UK faces devastation, with the Gulf Stream at risk of collapse within decades and billions of lives in jeopardy. The political order will not survive what is coming … Our elites have abandoned us. Only ordinary people can remake our world. And while we may have less, we will have spirit – and that is what truly matters.”

Parents with children in neonatal care will gain a day-one right to paid leave and pay in a move hailed as “a lifeline for parents” with sick babies.From Sunday, the measures will allow eligible parents to take up to 12 weeks of leave and pay, on top of maternity and paternity leave.Neonatal care leave will be available to parents of babies who are admitted into neonatal care up to 28 days old and who have a continuous stay in care of seven days or longer. One in seven UK newborns needs to be cared for in a specialist hospital unit.The Labour government’s employment rights bill, which passed its third reading in the House of Commons last month, will also provide other employment reforms such as menopause support, day-one rights for paternity, parental and bereavement leave for eligible workers, as well as protections against unfair dismissal for pregnant women and new mothers.Under the changes in the proposed legislation, parents in Britain will be granted a right to bereavement leave after experiencing a miscarriage. Mothers and their partners will be given the right to two weeks of bereavement leave if they have suffered a pregnancy loss before 24 weeks’ gestation.The reforms will also allow 1.3 million of the lowest-paid UK workers to be guaranteed sick pay worth up to 80% of their weekly salary from the first day of sickness.The employment rights minister, Justin Madders, praised campaigners and parents with experience of caring for very poorly children, calling them “an inspiration to us all” for showing the necessity of the new leave and pay entitlement.He said: “We know that many employers already go above and beyond the statutory minimum, which is why as part of our plan for change we are creating a level playing field that ensures parents, wherever they work, have the vital relief they need to switch off from work and focus on their newborn baby.”Bliss, a charity that supports the families of premature and sick babies, has called the change in the law transformative and said it would provide thousands of employed parents every year with the assurance that they can take the time to be with their sick baby when they need it most.Catriona Ogilvy, the founder of the parent-led charity the Smallest Things, said she was thrilled that leave and pay would finally be available to families from Sunday.Ogilvy said: “This new law is the result of a decade of tireless campaigning by those who truly understand – neonatal parents themselves. They know the journey doesn’t end when babies come home from hospital.“Neonatal leave will give families back stolen time. Time to be with their baby without the worry of work or pay. Time to bond. And time to begin to recover – both physically and mentally.”The minister for women’s health, Gillian Merron, said the law would give parents peace of mind so they could focus on their family.She said: “No parent should have to choose between being with their vulnerable newborn or returning to work. Our action today will make all the difference to families going through an incredibly stressful time.”

First it was steel producers. Then automobiles. Now the fashion industry has been left reeling from Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that he was imposing tariffs on more than 180 countries including severe levies aimed at some of fashion’s biggest manufacturing regions.Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs included a 10% duty on all imports to the US but “worst offender” countries – those with whom America has bigger trade deficits – face a higher rate. Several of these are key to fashion’s supply chains. China, where everyone from Prada to Zara outsource production, faces a 54% duty. Vietnam, where more than half of Nike’s footwear was produced last year, will be subject to a 46% tariff. Pakistan, a key manufacturer of denim items, will be hit with a 29% duty. Bangladesh, where garment manufacturing makes up to 80% of its total exports, will be subjected to 37% levy, while the EU, which accounts for at least 70% of the global luxury goods market, will be hit by a 20% tariff.Stefano Martinetto, the chief executive of Tomorrow, a fashion brand development platform that has made lead investments in the Parisian label Coperni and the British designer Martine Rose, describes the situation as extremely complex, with brands struggling to assess its impact. It is unclear what duties apply to a finished product.“Products are not made in one place,” Martinetto says. “You could have fabrics that come from Italy. Another element that comes from China. Something else from Korea. And then it could all be assembled in Turkey.“You have to understand the manufacturing chain and shipping chain and at the moment there is no clarity about what and where a tariff is to be applied.”The US is one of the world’s largest consumers of clothing and footwear, more than 98% of the country’s apparel is imported. In January, reports suggested fashion’s luxury market could benefit from increased consumer confidence in the US. But after already facing challenges including Brexit and Covid, the industry is now grappling with even greater uncertainty.On the markets, fashion stocks plunged after Wednesday’s announcement. Shares in the British brand Burberry dropped 10% on Thursday and by another 6% on Friday. Kering, the parent company of brands including Gucci and Saint Laurent, also fell sharply, as did LVMH, whose portfolio includes Dior and Louis Vuitton.There are rumours that Prada, which was expected to be nearing its acquisition of Versace from Capri Holdings, could hit pause until the market settles.Sports-focused brands which, after the implementation of tariffs on China during Trump’s first term in 2019 had shifted production to Vietnam and Cambodia, were also hit. Shares of Lululemon, Nike, Adidas and Puma all tumbled.While some brands seem to have been blindsided by the tariff announcement, LVMH has been publicly aligning itself with the Trump administration for several years. It operates two factories in California and one in Texas that account for 50% of its product volume in the US. Trump visited its Rochambeau Ranch in 2019, while his second inauguration in January this year was attend by Bernard Arnault, the LVMH chief executive, alongside daughter Delphine and son Alexandre.Nevertheless, without clear guidelines and threats of retaliation, no one in fashion is exempt from the current waiting game. Helen Brocklebank, the chief executive of Walpole, which represents the British luxury market, says the view is to “reserve judgment until there is more detail on how it will actually work”.North America accounts for 22% of all UK high-end goods exports. Brocklebank describes the UK government as so far taking a “measured response”, which she considers encouraging.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe tariffs are expected to cause fluctuations throughout the entire fashion supply chain that will affect everyone from farmers to craft workers. Insiders say it is inevitable that the prices of fashion products will rise, with consumers left feeling the pinch. This follows existing price rises; the average price of luxury goods has risen by 52% since 2019.While it is unlikely to dissuade the super-rich, aspirational shoppers are expected to be priced out. There are also fears that for some consumers, cheaper counterfeits (that fuel human trafficking and labour exploitation) could look more appealing.Martinetto says the tariffs could set the industry back 50 years. “European designers could end up selling mostly in Europe,” he says. “American designers could sell mostly in America.”While luxury giants may be able to overcome another seismic shift, there is a fear that smaller independent designers will not survive.

Donald Trump said he will sign an executive order to extend the TikTok ban deadline. This is the second time the president will have delayed the ban or sale of the social media app, and will punt the deadline to 75 days from now.The TikTok deal “requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed”, Trump announced on his Truth Social platform on Friday.ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, issued a statement in response to the executive order: “ByteDance has been in discussion with the US government regarding a potential solution for TikTok US. An agreement has not been executed. There are key matters to be resolved. Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law.”China put a possible deal on hold this week after Trump announced his sweeping tariffs, according to Reuters.Congress passed a law last year forcing TikTok to either divest or sell its assets in the US. The law stemmed from concerns that the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, could use the social media platform to manipulate Americans. The first deadline to ban or force the sale of the app was 19 January. But, on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to delay that decision to 5 April. Now the new deadline will be in mid-June.Earlier this week, the president met with potential buyers for TikTok and said his administration is “very close” to a deal. Among those who’ve reportedly thrown in bids are a consortium of investors led by the software giant Oracle, asset manager Blackstone, Amazon, Walmart, billionaire Frank McCourt, a crypto foundation, and the founder of the adult website OnlyFans.TikTok is a tremendously popular social media app with 170 million users in the US. Investors and corporations see huge appeal with owning the app and its secretive algorithm.ByteDance has said it has no plans to sell TikTok and in previous court filings said a divestiture “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally”.After announcing sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, Trump hinted on Thursday aboard Air Force One that he might lessen the trade penalties on China if ByteDance were to approve a sale. The country faces a 54% tariff on goods imported to the US.“We have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say we’ll approve a deal, but will you do something on the tariffs. The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn his Truth Social post Friday, Trump reiterated that sentiment, saying: “We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between China and the U.S.A.!).“We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark,’” he continued. “We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Wall Street suffered its worst week since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis five years ago as investors worldwide balked at Donald Trump’s risky bid to overhaul the global economy with sweeping US tariffs.The US president doubled down on his plan on Friday, insisting he would not back down even as the chairman of the Federal Reserve warned it would likely raise prices and slow down economic growth.A stock-market rout continued apace, with the benchmark S&P 500 falling 322 points, or 6%, and the Dow Jones industrial average retreating 2,231.07 points, or 5.2%, in New York. The Dow’s two-day slump has wiped out $6.4tn in value, according to Dow Jones Market Data.The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite, meanwhile, sank 5.8%, and entered bear market territory, having fallen more than 20% since peaking in December.Over the week, the S&P 500 fell 9.1%, its worst five-day trading stretch since March 2020.Trump sought to reverse the slide, but an insistence that his policies “will never change” in an all-caps social media post appeared to only reinforce apprehension over his strategy.“ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL!” he wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform.China outlined plans to retaliate, setting the stage for an all-out trade war between the world’s two largest economies, as other governments worldwide pulled together their response.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe sweeping package of tariffs unveiled by Donald Trump on Wednesday includes an exemption for the energy sector, which is a clear sign of the president’s fealty to his big oil donors over the American people, advocates say.Reports also indicated that Trump only signed off on the details of his bid to drive the world into a new economic era hours before it was unveiled. The US president decided on the final plan at about 1pm on Wednesday, according to the Washington Post. He announced it at 4pm.The US market declines capped another dismal day for global indices. The FTSE 100 fell 5% in London. The CAC 40 declined 4.3% in Paris. The Nikkei 225 dropped 2.8% in Tokyo.“It is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” the Fed chair Jerome Powell said. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”