Marketing Newscast

US President Donald Trump is doubling down on his imposition of global trade tariffs, refusing to back down, and even urging Americans not to panic, despite them – and us - seeing trillions of dollars wiped off pensions and savings as global stock markets plummet. “Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!). Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be the result!” he said on X.

Stocks still kept tumbling yesterday though. The FTSE 100 fell to a one-year low, down 6.3% at one point. Over the pond, the Dow Jones shed 1,200 points – a loss of more than 3%. The S&P 500 was down 3.7% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq suffered a 4% loss. This all means the global Liberation Day plunge has entered the history books as one of the worst falls of the 21^st century. The -10.5% hit to Wall Street’s S&P 500 over the past three days is beaten only by the -12.3% Covid drop; the 2008 crash fall of 13.9%; and 1987’s Black Monday, when the US blue chip benchmark tanked -26.3%. However, there is a small rally this morning. At the time of writing, the FTSE 100 is up around 135 points or 1.76%, while the FTSE All Share has risen by 1.81%.

The CEOs of some of the world’s biggest banks, including Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, JP Morgan and HSBC, are said by Sky News to have held private talks on Sunday about the economic and markets fallout from Trump’s tariffs blitz amid growing fears of a global recession.

China, meanwhile, says it will “fight to the end” if Trump follows through on his threat to impose 50% additional tariffs on the country from tomorrow, a threat in response to China slapping retaliatory tariffs of 34% on all US imports from Friday. Beijing said it will not bow down to “blackmail” over what it called “economic bullying”.

What China does next matters. As The Telegraph’s Economics Reporter Melissa Lawford writes: “China holds almost £600 billion in US government bonds, meaning that Xi, the Chinese president, has enormous power over the US economy. If Trump were to go ahead with his threat to raise tariffs on China by another 50 per cent – taking total duty on Chinese goods to 115 per cent – Xi could decide to retaliate by dumping US government bonds, which would devalue them and make borrowing costs soar for the US Treasury. It seems unlikely, as China would also suffer economically, but it is hard to escape the feeling that Trump and Xi are now engaged in history’s most expensive blinking contest”.

The EU’s latest response to Trump’s tariffs yesterday was ambiguous. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyden offered Trump a “zero-for-zero” tariff deal on all industrial goods, saying: "Europe is always ready for a good deal," but then Stéphane Séjourné, who is both executive vice president of the European Commission and commissioner for industrial strategy, threatened to bar American companies from bidding for taxpayer-funded contracts. The EU has “the cards” to hit back at Trump’s new 20% levy on all EU goods, and 25% on cars, he said, telling Radio France: “We could decide to withdraw all American companies from European public procurement”.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said at Jaguar Land Rover’s Solihull factory yesterday that the crisis called for “cool heads”. The UK had to “rise together as a nation” in the face of a new era of global instability and a “completely new world,” he said, adding that he would enable Britain to “seize the opportunities” presented by the turmoil. How he would do this though, did not feature in his speech. He did, however, say the Government would not break fiscal rules that mean Chancellor Rachel Reeves cannot borrow to fund day-to-day spending, and that public debt must be falling as a share of national income by the end of this parliament. He also repeated his commitment to not raise Income Tax, National Insurance, or VAT. “That is a commitment that we have made and a commitment that we will keep. The first lever can’t be more taxes,” he told journalists. In his speech, Starmer also announced that a ban on selling new petrol and diesel cars will still come into effect in 2030, but manufacturers will now have more flexibility on annual targets and face lower fines of £12,000, rather than £15,000, for ever non-electric vehicle they sell over a set quota. Smaller British firms like Aston Martin and McLaren will also be allowed to keep selling petrol cars beyond the 2030 deadline, but a ban on hybrid vehicles was confirmed as kicking in from 2035. Starmer also vowed to “rip up the red tape, cut the stifling bureaucracy that slows down clinical trials” saying he would standardise the contracts used to set up clinical trials and publish trust-level NHS data on clinical trials for the first time.

Ten media organisations have succeeded in challenging a gagging order intended to keep private details of a legal battle between Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Apple. In February, Cooper demanded the US tech giant install a ‘backdoor’ into the iPhone, to give the Government the power to snoop on owners’ iCloud-stored documents and photographs. Instead, Apple withdraw from the UK market its opt-in Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature, which encrypts the iCloud online storage system to prevent unauthorised access, rather than comply with Cooper’s order, before launching a legal challenge. Yesterday, Lord Justice Singh, the president of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), dismissed an application from the Home Secretary to keep the legal case between the two secret on public interest and national security grounds, concluding it did not warrant total secrecy. The media organisations concerned included The Telegraph, Guardian FT, Times, and Sun newspapers, as well as the BBC and PA Media. Five members of the US Congress also wrote to the tribunal warning that Cooper’s “cloak of secrecy” put the special relationship between the US and UK at risk. Campaign groups including Liberty and Privacy International also opposed the gagging attempt. UK surveillance laws prohibit the disclosure of ‘backdoor’ orders, hence the Home Office is refusing to comment even on the existence of the order, and Apple is also blocked, technically, from revealing its existence, despite the forthcoming court hearings.

The Resolution Foundation has released research it says shows the UK has suffered an “almost unprecedented” plunge in productivity over the past five years, based on falling GDP per head. This measure slumped by 0.5% between 2019 and 2024, the think-tank says, marking the worst drop since the 1970s, excluding the 2008 financial crisis. The research is completely at odds with official data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which estimates an increase of 1.8% over the same period. The disparity has arisen because the Resolution Foundation used payroll data and a short-term ONS survey measuring the number of jobs in the UK to arrive at its much worse verdict. It warned: “Britain has the unenviable record of having both falling productivity and the G7’s biggest drop in working-age employment since before the pandemic.” It added that part of the fall can be attributed to Britain’s declining North Sea oil and gas extraction, despite the industry’s workers doing roughly the same hours as in 2019. This alone explains 16% of the productivity gap with the US, it said. In the US, productivity has risen by 9.1% in the past five years.

The latest house price data from Halifax showed house prices fell in March, a dip Halifax described as demand ‘returning to normal’ after a rush to beat the increase in stamp duty that came into effect on 1^st April. Prices declined by 0.5%, following a 0.2% drop in February. Year-on-year, house prices were 2.8% higher in March. The average price of a home last month was £296,699.

Deliveroo’s Chief Business Office Carlo Mocci writes for City AM this morning, and warns that London’s restaurants can’t take any more punishing tax hikes. “There’s no doubt that London’s dynamic culinary scene sets it apart as a leading world city. But for a sector that is so integral to our capital’s economy, cultural reputation and international appeal, it too often feels as if hospitality is taken for granted by our policymakers,” he opines, adding that this week’s rise in employer national insurance contributions will be “a blow” that strikes at the businesses that make up “the fabric of our communities” and shape “the identities of our local neighbourhoods”. He also calls for new laws to protect those working in the hospitality and retail industry to be extended to delivery drivers. “The government has rightly committed to making assaulting or threatening retail workers a standalone offence in the Crime and Policing Bill. However, our view is this doesn’t go far enough and delivery riders must be afforded the same protections,” he writes, noting that his company has measured a 28% increase “in abusive incidents toward riders – including verbal and physical assault, racism, sexism and theft”.

And finally, Mark Kleinman at Sky News reports an exclusive, that Sir Tom Scholar, the top Treasury civil servant sacked by Liz Truss during her brief period as Prime Minister, is being lined up as the next chair of Santander UK, Britain’s fifth-biggest high street bank, amid speculation about a sale by its Spanish parent.