Trump tariffs live: 10% tariff kicks in for UK as Italy says retaliating against US will ‘damage everyone’

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is expected to spend the weekend speaking to foreign leaders about the tariffs, after calls with the prime ministers of Australia and Italy on Friday in which the leaders agreed that a trade war would be “extremely damaging”.

Downing Street said that Sir Keir spoke to Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese and Italian premier Giorgia Meloni and had “been clear the UK’s response will be guided by the national interest”.

Issuing a read-out of their separate conversations on Friday, Number 10 said the leaders “all agreed that an all-out trade war would be extremely damaging”.

A spokesperson said the PM “has been clear the UK’s response will be guided by the national interest” and officials will “calmly continue with our preparatory work, rather than rush to retaliate”.

“He discussed this approach with both leaders, acknowledging that while the global economic landscape has shifted this week, it has been clear for a long time that like-minded countries must maintain strong relationships and dialogue to ensure our mutual security and maintain economic stability,” the spokesperson added.

It is expected that Sir Keir will take further calls with counterparts over the weekend.

The prime minister will hold discussions with other international leaders this weekend as the government scrambles to respond to the news that British exports to the US willl face a blanket 10 per cent levy, a move that sent global markets tumbling and sparked fears the chancellor’s fiscal headroom could be wiped out.

In a rare intervention, the former PM told students at King’s College London that he supported Sir Keir’s “cool heads” approach to Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’, and he didn’t really understand the intellectual argument behind the tariff policy.

“I don’t think it is in the UK’s best interest to retaliate,” he said.

Some 1,200 demonstrations are planned across the US on Saturday in what organisers expect to be the largest single day of protest against President Donald Trump since he took the office.

The “Hands Off!” protests are coordinated in response to Mr Trump’s sweeping makeover of U.S. foreign and domestic policy through executive orders.

“This is an enormous demonstration that is sending a very clear message to Musk and Trump and congressional Republicans and all the goose-stepping allies of MAGA that we don’t want their hands on our democracy, on our communities, on our schools and our friends and our neighbours,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, one of the groups organising Saturday’s events.

Some 150 activist groups have signed up to participate, according to the event’s website.

Events are planned in all 50 states plus Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Mexico and Portugal. One of the biggest rallies is expected on Washington’s National Mall.

A deal between the White House and TikTok’s Chinese-based parent company ByteDance was postponed this week after president Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on US imports, according to reports.

A deal had allegedly been agreed on Wednesday and was due to be announced on Thursday. However The Washington Post reported that ByteDance told US officials that China had insisted on tariff negotiations before the deal went ahead.

Mr Trump has signed an executive order to extend the deadline for TikTok’s US ban by another 75 days. The US president said he was working on a deal to “save TikTok”, but added on social media platform Truth Social: “We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our reciprocal tariffs. We do not want TikTok to ‘go dark’. We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the deal”.

ByteDance said in a statement: “An agreement has not be executed. There are key matters to be resolved. Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law.”

There are higher tariffs for cars and car parts – 25 per cent – which will also extend to all computer imports, including laptops.

The list includes tariff codes for engines, transmissions, lithium-ion batteries and other major components, along with less expensive parts including tires, shock absorbers, spark plug wires and brake hoses.

Of the £60.4bn of goods exported to the US in 2023, machinery and transport equipment accounted for the largest share, at £27.2bn, ahead of chemicals (£14.2bn) and materials (£4.2bn).

The top commodity exported by value was medicinal and pharmaceutical products, accounting for £8.8bn of US exports, followed by cars (£6.4bn), mechanical power generators for intermediate sale (£5.2bn), organic chemicals (£2.8bn) and scientific instruments for sale as capital goods (£2.8bn).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to visit the White House on Monday to discuss recently announced tariffs with U.S. President Donald Trump, three Israeli officials said on Saturday.

The impromptu visit was first reported by Axios, which said that if the visit takes place, the Israeli leader would be the first foreign leader to meet with Trump in person to try to negotiate a deal to remove tariffs.

Netanyahu’s office has not confirmed the visit, that would likely also include discussions on Iran and Israel’s war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

The surprise invite by Trump came in a phone-call on Thursday with Netanyahu, who is presently on a visit to Hungary, when the Israeli leader raised the tariff issue, according to the Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to Reuters.

As part of a sweeping new tariff policy announced by Trump, unspecified Israeli goods exports to the United States face a 17 per cent tariff. The U.S. is Israel’s closest ally and largest single trading partner.

An Israeli finance ministry official said on Thursday that Trump’s latest tariff announcement could impact Israel’s exports of machinery and medical equipment.

Israel had already moved to cancel its remaining tariffs on U.S. imports on Tuesday. The two countries signed a free trade agreement 40 years ago and about 98 per cent of goods from the U.S. are now tax-free.

Deliberations within the Trump team on how to impose tariffs on foreign goods reportedly went down to the wire, with the president finalising his plans just three hours before Wednesday’s announcement, The Washington Post has reported.

The president’s team put up little dissent to the plan to overhaul US trade policy, the newspaper, which spoke to more than a dozen people inside and outside the administration, said.

A senior White House official told the paper: “There were a lot of options put in front of him. I think he just needed time to go through each one and pick out the ones he wanted. The great thing is that the team made everything interchangeable, so it was just a matter of him picking and choosing which ones he wanted to do.”

According to reports, White House trade officials presented a list of concessions from foreign trade partners in the lead up to Wednesday’s tariff announcement.

One foreign diplomat told the paper that Trump officials wanted regulations and other barriers taken away to free up sales of US goods and services abroad.

Nissan Motor is considering shifting some domestic production of US-bound vehicles to America, the Nikkei reported on Saturday.

As early as this summer, Nissan plans to reduce production at its Fukuoka factory in western Japan and shift some manufacturing of its Rogue SUV to the United States to mitigate the impact of Trump’s tariffs, the business newspaper said, without citing the source of its information.

The Japanese automaker’s Rogue SUV, a key model in the U.S. market, is now produced in Fukuoka and the United States, the report said.

On Thursday, Nissan said it would not take new orders from the US for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs after earlier Trump tariff announcements.

The automaker now plans to maintain two shifts of production of the Rogue at its Smyrna, Tennessee, plant after announcing in January it would end one of the two shifts this month.

Nissan sold about 920,000 vehicles in the U.S. last year, of which about 16 per cent were exported from Japan, the Nikkei said, adding the planned production shift could hit local suppliers’ businesses.

China called on Washington to have an “equal-footed consultation” on Saturday after they announced extra levies of 34 per cent on all US goods.

China also announced export curbs on some rare earth materials, escalating the trade war prompted by President Donald Trump’s imposition of additional 34 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the US.

The total duties imposed on China by the US this year is now 54 per cent.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Saturday: “Now is the time for the US to stop doing the wrong things and resolve the differences with trading partners through equal-footed consultation”.

President Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that “China played it wrong, they panicked – the one thing they cannot afford to do”.

He also used the platform to double down on his policy, writing: “To the many investors coming into the United States and investing massive amounts of money, my policies will never change. This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before”.

The Trump administration has placed a 10 per cent “reciprocal tariff” on the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are external territories of Australia near Antarctica, home to penguins, seals and glaciers.

The islands are entirely uninhabited by humans and only accessible via a two-week voyage from Perth via a boat.

“Nowhere on Earth is safe,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Thursday.