Businesses braced for ‘nosedive' in consumer confidence amid Trump's new tariffs

Independent

09-04-2025

Businesses in the UK have said they are bracing for a 'nosedive' in consumer confidence following the imposition of sweeping tariffs by Donald Trump.
The US president announced a wave of global tariffs last week, including a blanket 10% charge on goods from the UK.
Amid ongoing market turmoil, UK firms are facing uncertainty over how the changes will impact their business.
British audio brand Rega Research said the US is its largest export market, accounting for more than a fifth of its exports.
Simon Webster, sales and marketing co-ordinator of the Essex-based company, said: 'The effect on Rega and our US distributor could still be profound.
'Only time will tell how the US consumer will react to the increases.
'Our US distributor expects consumer confidence to nosedive and predicts that spending will effectively stop due to changes in the economy.'
He added: 'If the US had applied the same 20% tariff as the EU, the potential effect on Rega and our US distributor would have been catastrophic.
'The 10% UK tariff is perhaps an easier pill to swallow. However, it is certainly not without its challenges.'
Jack Thorpe, who co-owns gifting and cards website Paper Plane with his partner Laura Harvey, said prices may rise as a result of the tariffs.
'So many people are still unsure as to how this is going to affect their business overall,' he said.
'It's certainly stopped them spending for a little while, which is having a knock-on effect on us even though we're not directly affected by the tariffs for a lot of our orders.
'It's obviously weird, uncertain times. I think we will have to raise prices. We've done it with a few things, we've had to.
'We've been going for 10 years and the price of a greeting card has always been exactly the same for those 10 years, but in that time our costs have gone up, so the profit margin on that one card is going down, and down, and down.'
Total UK exports to the US amounted to more than £180 billion last year, according to the Department for Business and Trade.
Lucy Monks, international affairs director at the Federation of Small Businesses, said: 'We have had a lot of members get in touch with us. There are a range of views on how they might deal with this.
'Some have decided they're not going to bother with the hassle of exporting to the US, some are going to try and see how it goes. We're expecting to see some drop off.
'There's also a question mark over how exactly the US government is going to implement the tariffs and how far they have the systems in place.
'They're going to have to look and make reassessments on how they manage tariffs for a huge number of countries. That might cause knock-on effects on the variability of the US as a market as well.'
Liz Webster, founder of Save British Farming, said: 'For our group of farmers, the biggest fear is dumping.
'A lot of American produce goes to China, but won't now. That displaced produce will need to go somewhere.
'British food standards don't allow a lot of American produce, but our border system is as good as a chocolate teapot.
'We've got illegal foods coming in here and we're worried about a flood of cheap produce coming in.
'As to what it means for our inputs, we're reliant on fertiliser from the States. It depends what happens with inflation in the US, which could push up costs.
'We've bought our fertiliser for this year so it's not going to impact us this year, but from next year we could see a problem.'