For weeks the government told us they were preparing for all kinds of scenarios. A secret cabinet committee was considering how the UK might react if Trump’s tariffs materialised.
But now they are here, the actual response is… not to respond, and to spend four weeks asking businesses if they would like the government to respond later on. That is not just Whitehall dither: at this stage, there seems to be almost zero appetite among ministers to join in with the rounds of tariffs between the US, China, and perhaps the EU in coming days.
One Whitehall figure working with business says “there has not been a single voice in business, big or small, saying this is the wrong strategy”.
Ministers’ approach to get businesses on board, like when Sir Keir invited dozens of big wigs to No 10 the morning after Trump’s tariff announcement, is in part because of the anger when the government increased National Insurance contributions. “The really calm reaction,” one source says, “is because we got people into the headspace where tariffs were going to happen – one of the businesses said they were being borderline stalked, we’ve been trying to persuade business to trust the process.”
The government is in no rush, and has no enthusiasm to introduce its own new tariffs, and for now at least, demands on them to do so are muted. According to a minister: “Most people have considerable numbers of jobs in their constituencies on the line – even in cabinet there might have been some question marks but there weren’t this week.”
And they joke that the Lib Dems, who are calling for tariffs in retaliation, “keep demanding a trade war but I don’t think they’ll lead the nation”. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who also does not want extra tariffs, will be on tomorrow’s show too.
