
Watch shares plummet as tariffs hurt Switzerland
The stock fell 6.8 per cent, or 23.8p, to 326.8p, deepening the gloom around the luxury industry.
Shares in the group, which sells brands Rolex, Cartier and Audemars Piguet, and is advertised by actress Dakota Johnson (pictured), have plunged 23 per cent since Trump first announced tariffs on April 2.
Analysts at Barclays said this could be a 'significant headwind' for the London-listed company as brands will be likely to raise prices.
It had been opening US showrooms after being bitten by waning demand for watches and jewels, especially in the UK and Europe. Swiss luxury group Richemont also fell by 2.6 per cent.
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Reports emanating from a 'senior minister' say that the prime minister has ordered a 'comprehensive and expansive look' at the proposal: 'Keir is leading on it,' they said. 'This is a serious piece of work. After a year in government, it is clear that technology is underpinning everything. Digital ID is foundational. Things are moving forward.' Didn't we have identity cards before? They were introduced as plain cardboard documents during the Second World War as a national security measure. People had to use them to get rationed food and petrol, and had to be ready to produce them on demand, a serious infringement of the traditional British way of doing things. The request for 'Papers, please' has always been regarded as an alien phenomenon. 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At any rate, the current prime minister's chief aide, Morgan McSweeney, commissioned the TBI to produce proposals, and is said to be 'forceful' in making the case for them to No 10. Certainly, a more primitive version of this project was very much 'on the cards 20 years ago' when the Blair administration tried to bring in ID cards, but it ran into enormous resistance and administrative problems. The motives, in essence, were no different from today. In 2003, the then home secretary, David Blunkett, argued that cards with biometric data were needed so that 'people don't work if they are not entitled to work, they don't draw on services which are free in this country, including health, unless they are entitled to', and that 'when we find people we can identify quickly that they are not entitled and get them out'. When a limited, entirely voluntary ID card was introduced in 2010, some 15,000 were in circulation, but the incoming Conservative-Liberal Democrat government scrapped the entire scheme, after £5bn had been spent. A voluntary biometric residence permit is available as an option for foreign students or workers. Official photo ID cards for voting have also been introduced in recent years. What does the opposition say? Despite showing little interest in it while in government, earlier this year the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, conceded that digital ID could help tackle 'illegal' immigration. But Nigel Farage remains stubbornly libertarian, and opposes digital ID because he 'doesn't trust this government' and claims that it 'hurts law-abiding citizens'. Labour, and the Tories, could use his reluctance to argue that, given he is not prepared to use every possible measure in the fight against irregular migration, Farage wouldn't succeed in his own ambition to stop the boats. Will it happen? With 40 Labour backbenchers recently calling for change and the Conservatives warming to the idea, alongside the trend towards digitising everything, it feels pretty inevitable, like it or not. Will it work? To some extent, but there are ways to get around any system, and digital is no different from paper in that respect. It could make things worse for some. If a fraudster managed to 'steal' a vulnerable person's digital ID, for example, then it would be 'open sesame' on their entire life, and comprehensive identity theft might become more common. Leaks cannot be ruled out. There's also the grim possibility that a migrant who wanted to come to the UK to work, deprived of any ID, would just melt into the underground economy, and become even more exposed to crime and exploitation. In a worst-case scenario, some criminals or a malign foreign government could execute a mega-hack in which millions of people's data is stolen or frozen and held to ransom. 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