Importance Score: 55 / 100 🔵
Sky News came to an unexpected halt mid-broadcast as presenter Jon Craig some of the explained some of products which could be affected by Donald Trump’s global tariffs. During Thursday’s visit (April 3) to the teatime show, the political correspondent joined host Sophy Ridge on the evening show to warn that the UK could be set to retaliate over Donald Trump’s new trade tariffs. “In the House of Commons, Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, was telling MPs that the government reserves the right to take whatever action necessary if there’s no trade deal, and he talked about what he called possible retaliatory action,” he said.
On Wednesday (April 2), the US Preseident announced that he has imposed a 10 per cent tariff on British goods alongside substantial levies on global imports as part of the US President’s ‘Liberation Day’ speech. In the wake of his speech, the dynamic duo discussed the repurcussions of Mr Trump’s hefty trade tariffs on the UK. They revealed some of the over 8,000 products which will be affected by these changes, including cars, kitchen appliances, furniture and , surprisingly, camels.
Jon explained: “The government has published this enormous document, 400 pages, 8000 items that we import from the United States. It starts off with all these agricultural products here, heifers, cows, ducks, bovine animals and so on,” he said as Sophy queried if he had read through all 8,000 items.
“Live camels!” he exclaimed. “Who wants to import live camels apart from a zoo. Then you move indoors for the household products, lavatory seats and covers, bidet, lavatory pounds, flushing systems…
“And then in the kitchen – percolators, other appliances for making coffee. It’s all there. There’s toasters, furniture, you name it, clothes, everything.” He then moved on to some instantly recognisable iconic products which are set to be hit by the tariffs.
He continued: “Now, here we have some American icons… a Harley Davidson motorbike, I’m told at the moment will set you back £2,400. Now all these items here are items that used to attract tariffs when we were in the European Union.
“They stopped with Brexit, but they are candidates now for tariffs. Mr. Reynolds was at a select committee, the business and trade select committee, a few couple of months ago, and he was quizzed on whether this lot are going to attract tariffs, and he didn’t deny it at all.
“So you’ve got the Harley Davidson… the Tesla cars. Only yesterday, Sir Edvy was repeating a call he made in the House of Commons couple of weeks ago. Slap a tariff on Elon Musk’s Tesla cars… Levi jeans and Jack Daniels bourbon whiskey there.
“So those are the items that are looking favourites, pushing up the price…speeding down the street wearing your cool jeans and having a night cap late at night… There’s some of the candidates for the Trump tariff,” he warned.