Forget whisky, cars or chemicals. The real blow to the British economy from President Trump’s determination to impose steep tariffs on everything the United States imports from the rest of the world is still to come. Over the next few days, Trump plans to unveil levies on pharmaceuticals. And if the UK can’t find a way of carving out an exemption from that, it will do huge damage to us at the worst possible moment.
For the moment, drugs are exempt from the 10 per cent blanket tariff on US imports, and the higher country-specific levies. That will change in the next few days, with President Trump promising to add them to the list.
In fairness, he probably has more of a point about the unfairness of the trade in pharmaceuticals than he does about most goods.
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