International Trade Minister Liz Truss has today unveiled the UK Global Tariff in a letter to MPs and in the second reading of the Trade Bill in Parliament. You can view the letter below.
Our new tariff will apply to all countries with whom we don’t have a preferential trade deal.
- It will cut all tariffs originally below 2%, such as those on fire extinguishers, school pencils and gardening tools.
- All tariffs are going to be rounded down, so they are simpler to use e.g. Reading glasses down from 2.9% to 2%.
- Zero tariffs on a wide range of tools used in UK Production eg. Spanners, wrenches.
- Zero tariffs on products that are hard to obtain in the UK such as Pistachios and cooking oils, to lower costs
- Zero tariffs on renewable energy products.
- Tariffs retained on external meats to protect our homegrown produce.
On securing a preferential deal with the US, the Minister emphasised how valuable this would be to Scunthorpe as the US imposes a 25% tariff on steel. For a region that contributes more than a third of steel and iron exports to the US, a lower tariff would be incredible news for our area.