Marketing Newscast

(Edited 27 February 2025)

US President Donald Trump has said he will “soon” announce trade tariffs on the EU, saying it is likely to be a 25% tariff on imports of “cars and all other things." "The European Union was formed to screw the United States - that's the purpose of it and they've done a good job of it," he said. "But now I'm President," he said yesterday. The EU rejected the President's claims, saying the creation of a regional market had made doing business in Europe easier for American firms. "It has been a boon for the United States," a spokesperson for the European Commission said. "We're ready to partner if you play by the rules. But we will also protect our consumers and businesses at every turn. They expect no less from us."

Can Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer convince Trump not to whack tariffs on the UK? The two men will meet in Washington today, and Starmer will want to dissuade Trump from a similar move on Britain. He will also seek a security guarantee that the US will support Europe post any Ukraine/Russia peace deal, to ensure there will be no future Russian aggression. Speaking earlier, Starmer said: “The security guarantee has to be sufficient to deter Putin from coming again because my concern is if there is a ceasefire without a backstop, it will simply give him the opportunity to wait and to come again because his ambition in relation to Ukraine is pretty obvious, I think, for all to see.” So far, Trump is refusing to make any such commitment. He, meanwhile, is expected to challenge Starmer over his sale of the Chagos islands, which houses the strategically important Diego Garcia US military base, as well as the fact Starmer approves of the building of a Chinese ‘mega-embassy’ in the heart of London that Trump will argue will be used to spy on the West.

Ineos boss Sir Jim Ratcliffe, meanwhile, has said the EU must impose US-style tariffs on Chinese imports or risk the collapse of its chemicals industry. In a letter to members of the European Parliament, Ratcliffe claimed chemical producers are facing ruin because of soaring energy costs and green taxes. By way of example, he pointed to his ethylene facility in Germany, saying it was paying €100m (£83m) more than its US equivalent for gas and €40m more for electricity as well as a carbon tax bill of nearly €100m. “The industry is in crisis with such huge disadvantages. Instead of investing in growth for the future, it is fighting for survival,” he said, adding: “The consequence of this policy is that Europe will import all its raw materials from the USA and China, who will benefit enormously”. He also said that “decarbonising Europe by de-industrialisation is idiotic. We lose jobs and security and the CO2 simply floats back over Europe anyway.” Ineos’ enterprise includes eight manufacturing plants in China.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s national intelligence director has hit out at Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s order for Apple to develop a backdoor into the iCloud to enable the Government to spy on users. The Telegraph reports Gabbard as saying the ‘secret’ [1] UK order was a “clear and egregious violation of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties” that could also “open up a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation”. She promised to investigate whether the UK request was legal under US-UK data sharing laws, confirming she had directed a “senior intelligence community officer” to assess the order’s implications. Last week, Apple removed its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) [2] feature from British iPhones after the Home Office issued the company with a notice ordering it to develop a way to break the encryption that protects iCloud backups. Apple said it would rather remove the feature in Britain than build a backdoor, which would have allowed the security services to access details of suspected criminals, arguing that complying with the UK notice would endanger the privacy of all users worldwide.

The British car industry sold almost 20,000 fewer sales in January this year than it did in 2024, leading the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) to blame sluggish demand for electric vehicles (EVs) and the threat of US tariff, which could impact the 80% of cars that are built in the UK and exported. 78,012 cars were produced last month, whereas 98,811 were manufactured a year earlier. Also this morning, Aston Martin has announced job loses numbering as many as 170, some 5% of its global workforce, as its losses have widened. It also announced a second delay to the launch of its first electric car, which was planned for 2027, until “the latter part of this decade”. CEO Adrian Hallmark said EVs were “too extreme a step” for many of its customers so the company will instead prioritise plug-in hybrids.

More than half a million benefit claimants who are out of work because of ill health have never had a job, according to analysis of 2021 census data by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). 555,963 benefit claimants aged between 18 and 64 had never worked, equating to two out of five of the total number of those economically inactive and on sickness benefits. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the rest had been unemployed for long stretches. Only 48,828 people – or 3.3% – said they had worked in the last 12 months, the data said. The ONS also found that two in five of the people on benefits because they were too sick to work had no qualifications. The ONS further found that those in receipt of welfare were more likely to be white, born in the UK and native English speakers. A near-record 2.8m people are now reporting they are too unwell to work, The Telegraph says, 650,000 more than before Covid lockdowns, according to the ONS’s labour force survey, which is measured differently to the census.

BP has announced plans to cut its spending on renewable energy by £5bn a year, to between just £1.5 and £2bn, and it has been suggested that CEO Murray Auchincloss may scrap BP’s net zero goals completely. Investment in renewables ramped up under former CEO Bernard Looney, during which time BP set out to cut oil and gas production by 40% by 2030, and increase 10-fold its investment in low carbon energy. However, after Looney was forced out after “serious misconduct” involving his misleading the board about relationships with colleagues, Auchinloss has since taken a different view. “Today we have fundamentally reset BP’s strategy,” he said. We are reducing and reallocating capital expenditure to our highest-returning business to drive growth, and relentlessly pursuing performance improvements and cost efficiency.” BP has 16,000 British staff and is the country’s fifth largest publicly listed company.

Heathrow Airport is in talks with the 82 airlines which fly from the airport - including British Airways (BA) - about a once-a-decade review of its occupancy arrangements, Sky News reports, saying any changes could force many of them to relocate from their current base. It was unclear on Wednesday what stage the talks were at, or how fundamental the resulting changes would be, although airlines with major workforces at Heathrow are expected to try to moderate or resist enforced relocations, Sky’s City Editor Mark Kleinman writes. Industry sources described the possibility of BA relocating its existing Heathrow home as highly unlikely; BA moved exclusively into the £4.3bn Terminal 5 in March 2008, handling more than 30m passengers annually from there.

Meanwhile, will Gatwick Airport expand? A decision is expected later today on whether it will be allowed to open a second runway by transforming its northern runway, which is currently only used for taxiing or as a back-up. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander will announce her decision on the matter in a written ministerial statement to Parliament. Gatwick is Europe's busiest single runway airport - more than 40m passengers used it last year – and using a second runway could increase the number of departures by 50,000 a year by the end of the 2030s, the airport says.

And finally, Pets at Home is said by markets blog Betaville to be the target of a takeover bid, possibly from a private equity firm.

[1] Surveillance laws prevent the Home Office or Apple confirming the existence of a notice to access data.

[2] Advanced Data Protection (APD), launched by Apple in 2022, locks iPhone users’ iCloud accounts with end-to-end encryption, meaning that only the user themself can access the online account that stores messages, photos and notes. The feature was an opt-in extra until Friday, when Apple said it was no longer able to offer it in the UK.