Closing summary
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq opened at fresh record highs, amid a wave of optimism over the United States striking trade deals.
Canada scrapped its digital services tax targeting US tech firms, hours before it was due to take effect, in an attempt to kickstart stalled trade negotiations with Donald Trump’s administration.
The UK-US trade deal has come into effect today, which means lower tariffs for UK carmakers (10%) and the aerospace sector (0%).
A trade delegation from the European Commisison is heading to Washington DC today to resume talks on a tariff deal. European trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič will travel to Washington tomorrow night and hinted the EU and the US are close to a deal.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index in London dropped by 25 points, or 0.3%, to 8,773.
Germany’s Dax is down 0.6% while France’s CAC slipped by 0.3%.
UK households faced a renewed cost of living squeeze in the first three months of 2025 amid increases in taxes and inflation, official figures show, despite the economy growing at the fastest rate in the G7.
The Office for National Statistics said an important measure of living standards – real household disposable income per head – fell by 1% in the first quarter after growth of 1.8% in the final three months of 2024, in the first quarterly decline for almost two years.
The households’ saving ratio – which estimates the percentage of disposable income Britons save rather than spend – slumped by 1.1 percentage points to 10.9%, although this remains historically high.
The signs of a fresh hit to living standards come despite the latest snapshot confirming that the UK economy grew by 0.7% in the first quarter, the fastest rate in the G7 group of rich nations.
The UK government has called for an investigation into the conduct of bosses at one of the UK’s largest oil refineries after it collapsed into administration on Monday, prompting concern about job losses and disruption to fuel supplies.
Sources familiar with the situation said that government officials had been growing increasingly fearful about the finances of State Oil, which owns the Prax Lindsey refinery in north Lincolnshire, since April.
The heavily lossmaking company assured ministers it was in good health during a meeting at the Prax site in May but is understood to have suddenly admitted in the past week that it was on the verge of insolvency.
The company, the only British business to own one of the UK’s five key refineries, is understood to have failed to comply with multiple requests from Westminster to open its books as it plunged towards failure.
The government said workers had been “badly let down”.
The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, is now understood to be considering whether the wider oil refinery sector – which is struggling with low profit margins – should be allowed to tap a financial support scheme announced in last week’s industrial strategy and originally targeted at energy intensive sectors such as steel.
Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow. Take care! – JK
Updated
European trade commissioner hints EU and US close to deal
European trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič will travel to Washington tomorrow night hinting the EU and the US are close to a deal.
He revealed it was a good time get down to drafting an agreement.
A delegation has gone ahead of him for technical talk after the latest proposals were sent to Brussels by the Trump administration last Thursday.
The clock is ticking down to Trump’s self-imposed deadline for a deal of 9 July with a threat of 50% tariffs on all imports if nothing is struck. Šefčovič said at a briefing in Brussels:
The 9th of July is around the corner. So for me, it’s always a good sign when we kind of move from, I would say, exchange of views, into the drafting process.”
I have to say that, of course, you have to be very much focused on the results, because we are two biggest trading partners on this planet”
As you know, we received first drafts of proposals for the for the eventual agreement in principle we are working on that.
