Closing post
Time to wrap up here… our US politics Live blog will be tracking the action on that side of the Atlantic.
To recap….
Financial markets are shrugging off trade war fears, after Donald Trump declared the US will impose 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.
In London, the FTSE 100 has hit a new all-time high, touching 8,779 points for the first time ever, with housebuilders and mining stocks among the risers.
BP was the top gainer on the Footsie, after activist investor Elliott Investment Management took a stake.
Wall Street has opened higher, where shares in US steel makers rallied at the open – amid chat that tariffs will give them a competitive advantage to grow market share and lift their own prices.
Gold hit a new alltime high this morning to, rising above $2,900 per ounce.
Europe has vowed to respond to Trump’s threat, with German chancellor Olaf Scholz warning that “anyone who imposes tariffs must expect counter-tariffs.”
The UK government declined to comment, with Downing Street saying it has not seen details of Trump’s proposed steel and aluminium tariffs.
The UK steel industry is certainly worried, though.
Gareth Stace, director general of UK Steel, says:
The UK produces world-leading steel, supplying the US with high-quality products for defence, aerospace, stainless, and other critical sectors, materials that simply cannot be replicated elsewhere.
“At the same time, the introduction of further US tariffs will inevitably divert global trade flows, with excess steel potentially redirected to the UK market. This reinforces the urgent need for watertight UK trade measures in 2026 to prevent surges in imports following the UK’s steel safeguards expiry.
Accelerating the UK’s CBAM [Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism] to 2026 would provide an additional layer of protection against unfairly priced steel. The UK Government must act decisively to shield our domestic industry from the fallout of rising global protectionism.”
Five former US Treasury secretaries have attacked the actions of Elon Musk’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), warning that America’s financial credibility is at risk.
Look out, New Delhi!
India has “enormously high” tariffs that lock out imports, US President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser Kevin Hassett has said today in a TV interview.
Hassett told CNBC that Trump believed the US should impose reciprocal tariffs that are at least equal to those imposed by other countries, adding:
“If they go down, we’ll go down.”
“Almost every trading partner has much higher tariffs than we do.
Hassett also noted that Canada, Mexico and the UK had tariffs in the same range as the United States.
As this chart from Deutsche Bank shows, India would be in the front line to be hit by reciprocal tariffs:
Updated
