Confusion reigns in UK and EU over 15% tariff
Lisa O’Carroll
Confusion continues as as to whether Donald Trump’s new 15% tariffs kick in tomorrow in the UK or the European Union, regardless of the US commerce consultant Jamieson Greer’s assurances that nothing modifications for the 20-odd international locations the US has already agreed tariff offers with.
The new president of the British Chambers of Commerce, Andy Haldane, informed the BBC he believed that the 15% tariffs did apply from tomorrow until the federal government hears in any other case.
Haldane informed the BBC Today programme:
“We are 10% [tariff rate with the US]. If he [Trump] follows through tomorrow, that will be 15% and that will mean UK sits towards the bottom the league table in terms of who’s been made worst off by the measures of the weekend.”
And the German confederation of companies, BDI, known as on the EU to “quickly approach the US and provide clarity on tariffs and trade rules”.
With European inventory markets down in the present day, and analysts warning of an ‘unholy mess’ of tariff confusion, BDI president Peter Leibinger stated:
“These choices create vital new uncertainty for transatlantic commerce. Businesses on each side of the Atlantic urgently want planning certainty and dependable buying and selling circumstances.
The EU, with the help of the German authorities, ought to shortly strategy the United States and present readability on tariffs and commerce guidelines. Only by means of dialogue can transparency be established and belief in transatlantic financial relations be secured.”
On Sunday Greer informed CBS that the US is not going to again out of tariff offers it has already sealed with international locations around the globe, together with the UK, the EU, Japan, Switzerland and others.
“We want them to understand these deals are going to be good deals,” Greer stated. “We’re going to stand by them. We expect our partners to stand by them.”
In a strongly worded assertion, the EU known as on the US to not stroll again the July deal.
“A deal is a deal,” it stated, including:
“As the United States’ largest trading partner, the EU expects the US to honour its commitments.”
Key occasions
Adding to the confusion, there’s additionally uncertainty whether or not the brand new 15% tariffs are authorized.
That’s as a result of Trump is utilizing part 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which provides the president the ability to impose surcharges and import restrictions to deal with worldwide funds issues.
But some specialists are questioning how the US can have a balance-of-payments issues in an period of floating alternate charges.
Gita Gopinath, the previous first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, declared yesterday that the US doesn’t have a basic worldwide funds drawback:
Wearing my (former) IMF hat I’ll say that the US doesn’t have a basic worldwide funds drawback.
— Gita Gopinath (@GitaGopinath) February 22, 2026
A steadiness of funds (BoP) drawback arises when a rustic loses market entry or is near dropping market entry. As lengthy as there may be loads of demand for US debt and equities, which is the case, the US doesn’t have a ‘funds’ drawback. It can finance its commerce deficits…
— Gita Gopinath (@GitaGopinath) February 23, 2026
Atakan Bakiskan, economist at Berenberg, has written about this situation:
Are the brand new tariffs even authorized? The new Section 122 tariffs may face courtroom challenges, as the present US commerce deficit could not meet the situation of “large and serious balance-of-payments” deficits that grant the president authority to impose tariffs to handle “fundamental international payments problems.”
First of all, isn’t the steadiness of funds at all times equal to zero as an accounting identification below a versatile alternate fee regime? Second, what qualifies as “large and serious”? No president has ever invoked Section 122 earlier than, so any authorized problem will possible take time to resolve.
EU in search of ‘extra readability’ from US over tariffs
Lisa O’Carroll
The EU has stated “additional clarity” is required from the US as as to whether the tariff settlement it struck final July in Scotland nonetheless stands, after Donald Trump introduced a brand new global tariff of 15% on Saturday.
‘We are very clear what must occur right here. The US wants to inform us exactly what’s going on. Our intention is to proceed implementing the points of the settlement we made with the US,” stated commerce spokesman Olof Gill.
Gill added:
“Additional clarity is required. And I think it’s very fair to say that full clarity on what these new developments mean for the EU US trade relationship is the absolute minimum that is required in order for us as the EU to make a clear eyed assessment and decide on next steps.”
Lisa O’Carroll
The German chancellor Friedrich Merz has stated he expects Donald Trump to respect the tariff deal struck final July at his Scottish golf course.
As confusion reigns throughout the globe as as to whether the brand new 15% tariff fee, introduced by the US on Saturday, can be carried out for the UK, the EU and others, Merz’s spokesperson stated:
“We expect the US to follow the Supreme Court of the US decision with clear policies.”
The EU on Sunday known as on the US to honour the July settlement. “A deal is a deal” it stated.
The new 15% tariff fee Trump says he’ll impose from tomorrow flows from powers in the 1974 Trade Act, a distinct authorized framework to the reciprocal tariffs Trump imposed unilaterally final yr on dozens of nations.
They can solely maintain for 150 days and should then get congressional approval.
ING: Asia ought to profit from tariff modifications
Asia ought to emerge as a beneficiary of the US tariff reset, as the elimination of the IEEPA tariffs by the supreme courtroom lowers efficient tariff charges for key exporters like India, China, and Vietnam, says ING analyst Deepali Bhargava.
Bhargava says China stands to achieve meaningfully from the elimination of IEEPA tariffs, whereas the supreme courtroom ruling arguably improves India’s negotiating place as it hammers out an interim commerce cope with the US.
Vietnam, in the meantime, could possibly be the area’s greatest winner, as the transfer to a flat 15% tariff will make an much more beneficial manufacturing base for US-bound items.
While Japan and South Korea acquire little on tariffs alone, their strategic commerce and funding offers with the US ought to proceed as deliberate, Bhargava provides.
Lisa O’Carroll
The European Parliament is ready to pause the method of ratification of the commerce cope with Donald Trump later this afternoon, the lead negotiator of the conservative group of MEPs has stated.
The parliament has already paused the deal as soon as, over Trump’s risk to Greenland, however unpaused earlier this month with a vote of all MEPs anticipated in March to formally ratify the settlement.
Bernd Lange, chair of the International Trade Committee of the European Parliament, has convened a unprecedented assembly on Monday following the supreme courtroom ruling in the US putting down the tariffs as unlawful.
Zeljana Zovko, the lead commerce negotiator in the European People’s Party group on the US deal informed Bloomberg that “we have no other option” however to delay the approval course of to hunt to readability on the state of affairs.
How Trump’s 15% tariff might disrupt UK provide chains
Potential shockwaves from Donald Trump’s global 15% U.S. tariff might disrupt UK provide chains in a single day, warns Dr Jonathan Owens, senior lecturer in operations administration and global provide chain professional on the University of Salford.
If carried out, a 15% tariff coverage below Donald Trump might ship instant shockwaves by means of UK provide chains, regardless of the measures being imposed by the United States. The UK is tightly woven into global commerce networks, and many British companies both export on to the U.S. or provide essential parts that feed into American markets. A sudden price barrier of this scale wouldn’t be contained inside U.S. borders and might ripple shortly throughout the Atlantic.
In the quick time period, larger U.S. import prices would possible suppress demand for UK items, significantly in strategically very important sectors such as automotive manufacturing, aerospace, equipment, and prescribed drugs. British suppliers embedded in transatlantic manufacturing strains might face abrupt order cancellations, forcing manufacturing cuts and leaving warehouses with unsold stock. For smaller companies working on skinny margins, such disruption might shortly escalate right into a cash-flow disaster.
The oblique fallout could possibly be equally destabilising, Owens continues:
Countries hit by falling U.S. demand could flood European markets with surplus items, intensifying worth competitors and squeezing UK producers. At the identical time, foreign money volatility might surge, driving up hedging prices and injecting additional unpredictability into procurement and pricing methods.
Logistics networks wouldn’t escape unscathed, as delivery routes could possibly be quickly reconfigured as companies scramble to keep away from tariff publicity. This might result in port congestion, supply delays, and rising freight prices.
While the long-term penalties would rely upon political negotiations, the instant affect can be clear: heightened uncertainty, mounting price pressures, and a interval of acute provide chain turbulence as UK companies battle to stay resilient.
However, this might in the end show to be little greater than a burst of political theatre, producing headlines somewhat than lasting financial harm. If the coverage had been short-lived, disruption to UK provide chains is likely to be sharp however transient.
Confusion reigns in UK and EU over 15% tariff
Lisa O’Carroll
Confusion continues as as to whether Donald Trump’s new 15% tariffs kick in tomorrow in the UK or the European Union, regardless of the US commerce consultant Jamieson Greer’s assurances that nothing modifications for the 20-odd international locations the US has already agreed tariff offers with.
The new president of the British Chambers of Commerce, Andy Haldane, informed the BBC he believed that the 15% tariffs did apply from tomorrow until the federal government hears in any other case.
Haldane informed the BBC Today programme:
“We are 10% [tariff rate with the US]. If he [Trump] follows through tomorrow, that will be 15% and that will mean UK sits towards the bottom the league table in terms of who’s been made worst off by the measures of the weekend.”
And the German confederation of companies, BDI, known as on the EU to “quickly approach the US and provide clarity on tariffs and trade rules”.
With European inventory markets down in the present day, and analysts warning of an ‘unholy mess’ of tariff confusion, BDI president Peter Leibinger stated:
“These choices create vital new uncertainty for transatlantic commerce. Businesses on each side of the Atlantic urgently want planning certainty and dependable buying and selling circumstances.
The EU, with the help of the German authorities, ought to shortly strategy the United States and present readability on tariffs and commerce guidelines. Only by means of dialogue can transparency be established and belief in transatlantic financial relations be secured.”
On Sunday Greer informed CBS that the US is not going to again out of tariff offers it has already sealed with international locations around the globe, together with the UK, the EU, Japan, Switzerland and others.
“We want them to understand these deals are going to be good deals,” Greer stated. “We’re going to stand by them. We expect our partners to stand by them.”
In a strongly worded assertion, the EU known as on the US to not stroll again the July deal.
“A deal is a deal,” it stated, including:
“As the United States’ largest trading partner, the EU expects the US to honour its commitments.”
Shares in Danish pharmaceutical agency Novo Nordisk are sliding, after it introduced disappointing outcomes from a key weight reduction trial.
An 84-week trial of its CagriSema weight reduction product discovered that it induced a smaller weight reduction than a rival product, Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide (injectable Mounjaro).
People handled with CagriSema achieved a weight lack of 23.0% after 84 weeks in comparison with 25.5% with tirzepatide, Novo reported. As such, the trial didn’t obtain its main endpoint of demonstrating non-inferiority on weight reduction for CagriSema in comparison with tirzepatide.
CagriSema appeared to have a protected and well-tolerated profile; the most typical hostile occasions had been gastrointestinal, the corporate studies.
Novo’s shares are down 8.5%, as buyers digest this setback.
But Martin Holst Lange, government vp, R&D and chief scientific officer at Novo Nordisk, has a constructive take, saying:
“We are happy with the load lack of 23% for CagriSema in this open-label trial. CagriSema has the potential to be the primary GLP-1/amylin-combination product to succeed in the marketplace for folks dwelling with weight problems, documenting that cagrilintide provides to the prevailing advantages of semaglutide and affords clinically significant additive weight reduction results superior to what has been noticed with GLP-1 biology alone.
Based on the learnings from accomplished research we stay up for the REDEFINE 11 readout, and the initiation of the higher-dose CagriSema trial, that are each designed to evaluate the complete weight-loss potential of CagriSema.
Why rising commerce uncertainty is dangerous information
Donald Trump has managed one other blow to world commerce, Professor Costas Milas of the University of Liverpool’s administration college.
A flat tariff fee of 15% appears, at face worth, much less complicated than a number of tariff charges. Nevertheless, this can apply for as much as 5 months, after which, no exporter (and even importer) will know what to anticipate subsequent. The fundamental situation is that in anticipation of the mid-term elections in direction of the top of the yr, and with US inflation (the Fed’s most popular measure) already at 2.9%, Trump would possibly (or may not) be prepared to decrease tariffs from 15%.
The drawback for the UK financial system stays a major one, not least as a result of my recent paper exhibits that commerce uncertainty, once more on the rise, is a serious driver of future GDP and CPI inflation developments…
The supreme courtroom ruling in opposition to Donald Trump’s IEEPA tariffs is creating new cracks in the president’s “electoral-fiscal-trade” trilemma, says Grace Fan of City consultancy TS Lombard.
Fan writes:
Still, Trump’s trilemma (electoral-fiscal-trade) – in a midterm election yr in which Trump’s approval ranking is tanking – means the good tariff reshuffle has simply begun.
With the administration’s high priorities shaping as much as be voters and jittery bond markets, search for the White House to dial down tariffs additional on focused client gadgets this yr to handle the affordability disaster, whereas ratcheting up Sec. 232 (nationwide safety) and 301 (“unfair” commerce) tariffs to plug the IEEPA tariff income gap with Sec. 122 set to run out in August.
Likely losers are choose industrial sectors, with the burden falling on each US importers and throughout core buying and selling companions (USMCA, Asia, EU).
Doug Gurr chosen as most popular candidate to chair CMA
Former Amazon boss Doug Gurr has been named as the popular candidate to chair Britain’s competitors watchdog, regardless of criticism of his appointment as interim chair a yr in the past.
Business secretary Peter Kyle has introduced that Gurr is his alternative of candidate to proceed as chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), “following an open competition for the role”.
Kyle stated the CMA has been enjoying a key function delivering the federal government’s pro-growth agenda below Gurr’s management since final January. He was appointed interim chair in early 2025, after the federal government grew annoyed that the CMA was not doing sufficient to help progress, and forced out its chair, Marcus Bokkerink.
Gurr’s appointment as interim chair was controversial, although; it was known as a “slap in the face to workers” by commerce unions and Trumpian by client activists. It prompted fears that the CMA would wave by means of business offers with out the required scrutiny, if bosses might declare they’d be good for progress.
Financial markets are being being “rattled by fresh trade uncertainty”, studies Susannah Streeter, chief funding strategist at Wealth Club:
“The rip-roaring efficiency of the Footsie has been interrupted as recent commerce chaos mars the social gathering. The exuberance that flashed over global markets after the US Supreme Court rejected Trump’s tariffs as unconstitutional is evaporating.
The President is utilizing a backdoor by way of the Trade Act to reimpose non permanent blanket tariffs of 10% and has threatened to extend the speed to fifteen%. Bilateral offers reached by means of tortuous negotiations have been thrown up in the air once more, making a cloud of uncertainty. Countries are already making ready to retaliate, with the European Union trying set to halt the ratification of a cope with the US and India additionally suspending its negotiations to finalise an settlement.
Instead of taking a giant step ahead, global commerce has taken two steps again. Companies are having to plan a number of situations, and future income streams are more durable to map when the bottom retains shifting.
Unicredit: Tariff uncertainty is again
Despite the heightened uncertainty, the supreme courtroom ruling offers Trump “an off ramp from his tariff intensive strategy ahead of the midterm elections”, argues analysts at Unicredit.
Unicredit informed shoppers this morning:
Last Friday, the US Supreme Court dominated, in a 6-3 determination, that the tariffs US President Donald Trump enacted below the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) are unlawful.
This covers round 70% of all extra tariffs Trump has imposed throughout his second time period, together with the so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on virtually all international locations that had been introduced on “Liberation Day” and extra tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China associated to unlawful fentanyl.
The Trump administration responded over the weekend – invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 by declaring a steadiness of funds disaster to impose a 15% tariff on virtually all international locations that can final 150 days, until Congress decides to increase it, which appears unlikely.
The new tariffs exclude sure essential minerals, prescribed drugs, USMCA-compliant items from Canada and Mexico (that are lined by a free commerce settlement), and these sectors topic to tariffs below Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (e.g. vehicles, metal and aluminium).
Manufacturers are among the many fallers on Germany’s DAX inventory index this morning.
Carmaker BMW’s shares are down 1.4%, Daimler Truck has dropped by 1.1% and Airbus has misplaced 1%.
The Dutch market can also be decrease, pulling Amsterdam’s AEX index down by 0.4%.
German and French inventory markets fall amid ‘unholy mess’ of tariffs
France and Germany’s inventory markets have been hit by US commerce uncertainty too.
In Frankfurt, the DAX index has dropped by 0.6%, as merchants fret that Europe’s commerce cope with the US could unravel.
France’s CAC 40 index is beginning the brand new week in the crimson too, dipping by 0.35%.
Richard Hunter, head of markets at interactive investor, says:
Tariff developments have turned the state of affairs into an unholy mess, prompting much more questions than solutions. After the Supreme Court dominated in opposition to the President’s tariffs, the implications are removed from clear. No reference was apparently made in the ruling as as to whether the monies raised from tariffs thus far would must be repaid and, even if so, whether or not the refunds would go to firms or the final word buyer who may have suffered larger costs.
To additional compound the confusion, the President instantly invoked a distinct Act and introduced that he would impose a blanket 10% global tariff, which he raised to fifteen% the next day. This brings one other degree of uncertainty given the commerce offers that are already in place, though spokespeople from the White House implied that these would stay in place, which appears to contradict the Supreme Court ruling.
