GB News host Tom Harwood branded Donald Trump’s new tariffs on UK imports as “utterly, utterly bonkers” after they were announced last night.The controversial measures sparked heated debate on the programme, with Tom warning the import taxes will backfire on American manufacturing.President Trump’s 10 per cent tariffs on UK goods and services have sent economic shockwaves across British industries.The measures were announced during what Trump dubbed “liberation day” at the White House.GB News host Emily Carver said on The Peoples Channel: “I thought the speech last night was brilliant. Highly entertaining. The showman, when he whipped out his poster showing all the little the tariffs, he came across rather reasonable. It was a show.”Co-host Tom responded: “It was a show, but it was a terrible show.”Emily argued in response: “But if you were in one of these old manufacturing areas of the United States where you’d seen every factory close, all those jobs lost, you would have thought, well, this is brilliant.”Shaking his head, Tom responded: “This is a political nightmare. The numbers on this chart that he’s holding up here are completely fabricated.”He added: “I mean, it’s utterly, utterly bonkers.”Emily said: “The numbers have been played around with and they reflect all sorts of different things, including trade imbalances and regulation in terms of regulatory tariffs and that sort of thing. Imagine you are in one of these towns in the United States where you have seen factories closed.”Where you have seen manufacturing decline, where industry is dead, where you’re out of work or or you haven’t been in work in a traditional industry where you had your job. Not that long ago you would be looking at this thinking, brilliant.”Tom pointed out: “Yes. Because you wouldn’t be a trained economist. Every single economist says that knows that these places, these car manufacturing places, need to use imports in order to build those cars.”It is going to be more expensive to build a car in the United States, not less expensive.”He added: “The very thing designed to help it will hurt them. It will be more expensive to manufacture in the United States thanks to these.”The US president called his announcement a “declaration of economic independence”.The £2.3trillion worth of goods imported to the US every year have now all been hit with tariffs, with the ‘baseline’ set at 10 per cent kicking in immediately.The UK received what Trump called the “baseline tariff” – the joint lowest rate of any country – while the EU faces a steeper 20 per cent on its exports to the US.Other nations face even higher rates, with China receiving 34 per cent tariffs, Japan 24 per cent and India 26 per cent.Trump explained his approach: “We will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us. So the tariffs will be not a full reciprocal.”
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