Trade Secretary to meet US counterpart in bid to secure steel tariff exemption
The meeting will come after Mr Trump said he was doubling tariffs on imports of steel from 25% to 50%.
The UK struck a deal with Washington for import taxes on its steel to be removed weeks ago, but its implementation has not been finalised.
Trade officials and negotiators are planning to speak to the US as soon as they can to understand the implications of Mr Trump's latest steel tariffs.
They want to secure a timeline for the UK-US deal to be implemented as quickly as possible in the coming weeks.
Jonathan Reynolds will meet US trade representative Jamieson Greer to discuss timings for the deal to be in place when both attend the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) meeting in Paris next week.
Earlier this week, a federal court blocked many of the sweeping Trump tariffs imposed on imports from countries around the world, but left some in place, including those on foreign steel and aluminium.
On Thursday, a federal appeals court said it was allowing Mr Trump to continue collecting import taxes for now.
On Friday, Mr Trump announced he would double the tariff rate on steel to 50%, starting on June 4.
A Government spokesperson said: 'The UK was the first country to secure a trade deal with the US earlier this month and we remain committed to protecting British business and jobs across key sectors, including steel.
'We are engaging with the US on the implications of the latest tariff announcement and to provide clarity for industry.'
The agreement, known as the economic prosperity deal, is expected to be presented to Parliament before it comes into force.
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Telegraph
40 minutes ago
- Telegraph
How Britain's biggest companies are preparing for a Third World War
The year is 2027 and a major global conflict has erupted. Perhaps China has launched an attempted invasion of Taiwan, or Russian forces have crossed into the territory of an eastern European Nato country. Whatever the case, Justin Crump's job is to advise big companies on how to respond. And with tensions rising, a growing number of chief executives have got him on speed dial. The former Army tank commander, who now runs intelligence and security consultancy Sibylline, says his clients range from a top British supermarket chain to Silicon Valley technology giants. They are all drawing up plans to keep running during wartime, and Crump is surprisingly blunt about their reasoning: a global conflict may be just two years away. 'We're in a world which is more dangerous, more volatile than anything we've seen since the Second World War,' he explains. There are lots of crises that can happen, that are ready to go. 'Chief executives want to test against the war scenario, because they think it's credible. They want to make sure their business can get through that environment.' The year of worst case scenarios He rattles off a series of smouldering international issues – any one of which could ignite the global tinderbox – from Iran's nuclear ambitions, to China's threats to Taiwan, to Vladimir Putin's designs on a Russian sphere of influence in Ukraine and beyond, as well as Donald Trump's disdain for the post-1940s 'rules-based international order'. Against this backdrop, planning for war is not alarmist but sensible, Crump contends. With all these issues building, 2027 is viewed as the moment of maximum danger. 'The worst case scenario is that all these crises all overlap in 2027,' he explains. 'You've got the US midterms, which will have taken place just at the start of that year, and whatever happens there will be lots of upset people. It's also the time when a lot of the economic disruption that's happening now will have really washed through the system, so we'll be feeling the effects of that. And it's also too early for the change in defence posture to have really meant anything in Europe.' Putin and Xi Jinping, the president of China, are acutely aware of all this, he says, and may conclude that they should act before the US and Europe are more fully rearmed in 2030. 'In their minds now, the clock is ticking,' he adds. He also points to major British and Nato military exercises scheduled to take place in 2027, with American forces working to a 2027 readiness target as well. 'There's a reason they're doing it that year – because they think we have to be ready by then,' Crump says. 'So why shouldn't businesses also work off the same thinking and plan for the same thing?' He is not alone in arguing that society needs to start expecting the unexpected. In 2020, the Government established the National Preparedness Commission to ensure the UK was 'significantly better prepared' for the likes of floods, power outages, cyber attacks or wars. It has urged households to keep at least three days' worth of food and water stockpiled, along with other essential items such as a wind-up torch, portable power bank, a portable radio, spare batteries, hand sanitiser and a first aid kit. 'In recent years a series of high-impact events have demonstrated how easily our established way of life can be disrupted by major events,' the commission's website says – pointing to the coronavirus pandemic, recent African coups, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and turmoil in the Middle East. Britain is also secretly preparing for a direct military attack by Russia amid fears that it is not ready for war. Officials have been asked to update 20-year-old contingency plans that would put the country on a war footing after threats of attack by the Kremlin. All of this has led major businesses to conclude that perma crisis is the new normal, Crump says. In the case of Ukraine, Western sanctions on Russia forced companies to choose between continuing to operate heavily-constrained operations in Russia, selling up, or walking away entirely. Crump recalls speaking to several clients including a major energy company in the run-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He and his colleagues urged the business to evacuate their staff, at a point when it was still received wisdom that Putin wouldn't dare follow through with his threats. 'I had almighty arguments with some people in the run-up, because I was very firmly of the view, based on our data and insights, that the Russians were not only invading, but they were going for the whole country. But other people in our sector were saying, 'No, it's all a bluff'. 'Their team came to me afterwards and said: 'After that call, we were convinced, and we got our people out'. They got a lot of grief for that at the time, from people who were saying it was all nonsense. 'But then on the day of the invasion, they told me they got so many calls actually saying 'thank you for getting us out'.' Yet even in Ukraine, much of which remains an active war zone, life must go on – along with business. 'I've been to plenty of war zones,' says Crump. 'And people are still getting on with their lives, there's still stuff in supermarkets, and things are being made in factories – but that certainly all gets a lot more difficult.' In the case of a major British supermarket, how might executives plan for, say, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? The first question is how involved the UK expects to be, says Crump. But if Britain, as might be expected, sides with the US at least in diplomatic terms, 'we're not buying anything from China'. That immediately has implications for a company's supply chains – are there any parts of the supply chain that would be crippled without Chinese products? But as the recent cyber attack on Marks & Spencer has demonstrated, attacks on critical digital infrastructure are also a major risk to supermarkets in the event of a war with China or Russia. 'If you look at a retailer, the vulnerability is not necessarily whether or not they can transport stuff to the shop, even in a war zone,' says Crump. 'The problem becomes when you can't operate your systems. 'If you can't take money at the point of sale, or if you have no idea where your stock is because your computer system has been taken down, you've got major problems and you can't operate your business.' Workforce gaps In a scenario where Britain becomes involved in a war itself, Crump says employers may also suddenly find themselves with gaps in their workforces. He believes things would need to get 'very bad indeed' for the Government to impose conscription, which applied to men aged 18-41 during the Second World War. But he points out that the calling up of British armed forces reservists would be very likely, along with the potential mobilisation of what is known as the 'strategic reserve' – those among the country's 1.8 million veterans who are still fit to serve. There are around 32,000 volunteer reservists and an undisclosed number of regular reserves, former regular members of the armed forces who are still liable to be called up. 'There's a big pool of people we don't tap at the moment who are already trained,' explains Crump. 'But there would be consequences if the entire reserve was called forward, which would have to happen if we entered a reasonably sized conflict. It would certainly cause disruptions. 'The medical services are hugely integrated with the NHS, for example, and we saw the effects of them being called forward with Iraq and Afghanistan.' Food supplies The sort of supermarket chaos that erupted during the Covid-19 pandemic would also return with a vengeance if a significant conflict broke out. During that crisis, grocers had to limit how many packs of loo rolls and cans of chopped tomatoes shoppers were allowed to take home, among other items, because of supply chain problems. 'If we're in a conflict, that sort of supply chain activity would increase,' notes Crump. 'So you don't necessarily have rationing imposed, but there might be issues with food production, delivery, payment and getting things to the right place. 'In a world where we don't have our own independent supply chains, we're reliant on a lot of very interconnected moving parts that have been enabled by this period of peace. 'We've never been in a conflict during a time where we've had 'just in time' systems.' Spanish blackouts: A dry run Crump brings up the recent blackouts in Spain and Portugal. British grocers initially thought their food supplies would be completely unaffected because truck loads of tomatoes had already made their way out of the country when the problem struck. But the vehicles were electronically locked, to prevent illegal migrants attempting to clamber inside when they cross the English Channel and could only be unlocked from Spain – where the power cuts had taken down computer systems and telecoms. 'People in Spain couldn't get online, so we had locked trucks full of tomatoes sitting here that we couldn't open because of technology,' Crump says. 'No one had ever thought, 'But what happens if all of Spain goes off the grid?' And I'm sure the answer would have been, 'That'll never happen' anyway.' This tendency towards 'normalcy bias' is what Crump tries to steer his clients away from. While it isn't inevitable that war will break out, or that there will be another pandemic, humans tend to assume that things will revert to whatever the status quo has been in their lifetimes, he says. This can mean we fail to take the threat of unlikely scenarios seriously enough, or use outdated ways of thinking to solve new problems. 'We've had this long period of peace and prosperity. And, of course, business leaders have grown up in that. Military leaders have grown up in it. Politicians have grown up in it. And so it's very hard when that starts to change. 'People have grown up in a world of rules. And I think people are still trying to find ways in which the game is still being played by those old rules.' Unsurprisingly, given his line of work, Crump believes businesses must get more comfortable contemplating the unthinkable. 'Go back a decade and most executives did not want to have a crisis because a crisis is bad for your career, so they didn't want to do a test exercise – because you might fail,' Crump adds. 'But the whole point is that you can fail in an exercise, because it's not real life.'
The Guardian
43 minutes ago
- The Guardian
I got British citizenship via the five-year route. Labour's new 10-year rule will cause untold pain
There are many lies told by politicians when it comes to immigration in the UK, but none is bigger than the claim that it's all too easy. Too easy to enter Britain; too easy to be given handouts; too easy to acquire citizenship. The UK is presented as an inert country, passively receiving future Britons that it does not charge, test or, indeed, invite. The government's latest raft of policies to deal with the 'failed experiment' of 'open borders' is heavily influenced by this lie, as it is intended to make things harder for immigrants. One of those policies went broadly under the radar, a small technicality amid Keir Starmer's unsettling rhetoric, but it will have serious consequences. That policy is extending the period you're required to be settled in Britain before you can get permanent residency, and then citizenship, from five years to 10 years. As someone who became naturalised under the five-year route, my stomach sank when I saw the news. There is no automatic route to citizenship in the UK for foreigners, not through marriage to a British citizen or even birth on British soil to non-British parents; there has long been a residency requirement component. The 'settlement' route to citizenship is – or was – open to those who have worked and lived in the country legally for five continuous years, and their dependants. After that five years, one can apply for 'indefinite leave to remain' (ILR). After a minimum of a year on that status, one can apply for naturalisation, and then a British passport. If the government's new policies come to pass, the route to settlement will now take a minimum of 11 years, not including any time spent in Britain as a student or on other visas that don't count towards the settlement component. I know from experience that five years are already one long trial of keeping jobs against all odds and fighting sudden changes in the law. Doubling that time has ramifications that encompass everything from professional security to that supposed holy grail of immigration anxieties, 'integration'. The panic about settlement is misinformed by temporary patterns and faulty premises. After Brexit and the pandemic, the need to support struggling health and care sectors led to a short-term increase in work visas. And what counts towards immigration numbers includes category errors, such as students, as well as an underlying assumption that all those who enter on long-term visas with a potential for settlement will remain. A report from 2023 indicates that, of those on work routes in 2018, only 38% still had valid or indefinite leave to remain five years later. By this measure, not all workers and their families, not even half, are likely to remain in the UK and apply for citizenship – the punitiveness of the extension is disproportionate to the pain it will inflict. It is particularly gratuitously cruel as the 10-year limit will be applied retroactively. Those who came to the UK based on the understanding that naturalisation was an option, and made big life arrangements on that basis, now find themselves literally unsettled. Once the proposed new rules were announced, I received a flurry of correspondence and calls. 'I feel it is unfair,' Christine (not her real name), a skilled worker who was one year away from securing ILR, told me. 'Moving to a new country is not a life decision that anyone takes lightly,' she said. These are people who are keenly aware that they have no recourse to public funds and risk having to pack up and leave if they lose their jobs. Christine understood that uncertainty was part of the deal – but thought it could be weathered if she followed the rules, with the promised reward at the end of being 'accepted into British society'. Vulnerability is a point that recurred in conversations. Even for those happy in their work, the prospect of being in bondage to their employer for double the anticipated time seized them with a sense of precariousness. Workers' visas are tied to their employers. They can't just leave or look for another job, unless the new employer is willing to take on the cost and effort of sponsoring them. The new rules limit career prospects, and will expose people to the whims of bosses and employers. Every bad day at work becomes not just that, but a worry that your whole life in the UK may be over. Long-term sickness becomes not just a health calamity, but an existential one. Then there is the cost and administrative burden. Each extension or renewal of a visa can cost up to almost £2,000, in addition to the £1,035 annual NHS surcharge that migrants need to pay (on top of national insurance contributions). Over a period of 10 years, a family of four could pay almost up to £35,000 in health surcharges alone. There are other potential cascading costs. Children without ILR, for example, will enter the university system as overseas students, and may be treated as such for fees purposes. Many of these human consequences have not been thought through. We know this because one chilling aspect of the new policies is the lack of specificity beyond the headline summary. The extension comes with the caveat that some people will qualify 'sooner based on criteria yet to be decided', and that there will be a 'consultation' later this year. To anyone who has dealt with the Home Office, this working-it-out-as-you-go-along language augurs the sort of unclear process that one immigrant in the throes of challenging a Home Office error once told me was akin to 'climbing a crumbling staircase'. Above all, the rule changes show how little our politicians really care about integration. They constantly cite it as the epitome of what earns the right to be in the country and accuse immigrants of not holding up their end of the bargain. But being stuck on work visas for year after year amounts to the opposite of integration. It means you can't vote, cannot have recourse to public funds if needed, cannot fully lean in to British society and participate with a sense of safety and belonging, as you're constantly trying to minimise costs in case a change in circumstances means relocating. The policy creates a tier of second-class worker, a sort of migrant labourer welcomed for their work and paying of taxes, but shut out from the privileges enjoyed by British nationals. That's the real cost of this shortsighted and heartless change. Those who come to the country and build a life, have or bring children, become part of the fabric of society, and work continuously throughout their naturalisation time might soon be prevented for more than a decade from having a relationship with the British state that is defined by anything more than fear and anxiety. If there were ever a 'failed experiment', this is it. Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
The Guardian
43 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Blue Labour group urges ministers to ‘root out DEI' to win over Reform voters
The Labour faction influencing Downing Street's pitch to Reform UK voters has urged ministers to 'root out DEI'. An article from the Blue Labour campaign group, titled What is to be Done, calls for the government to legislate against diversity, equity and inclusion, echoing the rightwing backlash from Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. Describing itself as part of a tradition of 'conservative socialism', the caucus was founded in 2009 by the academic Maurice Glasman, now a Labour peer. It includes the MPs Dan Carden, Jonathan Brash, Jonathan Hinder and David Smith, who represent seats in the north of England. Keir Starmer's turn to the right and framing of Labour as 'the party of patriotism' mirror Blue Labour thinking. Urging the party to renew its 'covenant with the British people', Blue Labour's article said: 'We are proud of our multiracial democracy and we utterly reject divisive identity politics, which undermines the bonds of solidarity between those of different sexes, races and nationalities. 'We should legislate to root out DEI in hiring practices, sentencing decisions and wherever else we find it in our public bodies.' Earlier this week, the Guardian reported how organisations are rebranding inclusion initiatives to avoid unwanted political attention, reflecting a divergence between trade bodies and employers who believe policies designed to ensure a level playing field are good for business and society, and reactionary politicians. In February, the equalities minister, Seema Malhotra, said the government was 'absolutely committed' to diversity and inclusion, with new legislation that would compel employers with more than 250 staff to report on ethnicity and disability pay gaps progressing though parliament. Launching the consultation on the equality (race and disability) bill, which closes on 10 June, the disability minister, Stephen Timms, and Malhotra said the 'commitment to create a more equal society in which people can thrive whatever their background' was an 'essential element' of Labour's project. They added: 'The reality is far from that goal. For example, currently most ethnic minority groups earn on average less than their white British peers. Similarly, while there has been growth in employment rates for disabled people in recent years, disabled people have, on average, lower incomes than non-disabled people. While previous Labour governments introduced landmark … equality-related legislation, more still remains to be done.' However, since this year's local elections, when Reform gained a foothold in local government after seizing scores of seats from Labour, the prime minister has appeared to be trying to counter the threat from Farage by moving further to the cultural right, despite the risk of losing support from minority ethnic voters, who were more likely than white voters to support Labour in the last general election, and left-leaning voters in general. In mid-May, ministers were forced to strongly deny allegations that Starmer sounded like Enoch Powell in a speech that said Britain risked becoming an 'island of strangers', and that 'uncontrolled' migration had done 'incalculable damage', as he launched plans to curb net migration. Blue Labour calls for lower migration in the same article in which it takes aim at DEI, saying: 'Immigration is not a distraction or a culture war issue; it is the most fundamental of political questions, a cause of social fragmentation, and the basis of our broken political economy. 'We should drastically reduce immigration, reducing low-skill immigration by significantly raising salary thresholds; closing the corrupt student visa mill system; and ending the exploitation of the asylum system, if necessary prioritising domestic democratic politics over the rule of international lawyers.' In May, it emerged that net migration almost halved in 2024.
