CGTN Europe interviewed Allie Renison, a former UK trade department official who now works at consultancy SEC Newgate.
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00:00Well, Ali Renneson is a former UK trade department official now working at the consultancy SEC Newgate
00:06She's been talking to Robin Dwyer about the tariffs that have taken effect.
00:12I think in terms of the tariffs that have come into force today on steel and aluminium
00:16We're already starting to see the price rises being passed on at least between businesses from business to business
00:21So people that are sourcing the parts then actually manufacture
00:24I think in terms of the end impact on kind of consumers and sort of customers
00:28That will probably take, you know, a couple of weeks to sort of pass through particularly for things like cars where you know
00:34The supply chains are quite complex
00:35But we know that basically businesses have been getting themselves ready for these tariffs and have started to already sort of signal to
00:42Their customers that we had this sort of CEO big companies Walmart and Target saying that price rises were probably likely in the future
00:49When it comes to cars, for example
00:51Are we going to get into a situation where actually some of these businesses might end up struggling to survive because of these tariffs?
00:59Well, certainly production lines, you know, might they actually grind to a halt? We've heard certainly
01:05Country leaders from the Canadians to to other parts of the world saying that that might actually sort of shut down some of the production
01:11Lines, I think that in terms of actually sort of businesses sort of ceasing operations entirely
01:16That's probably actually unlikely
01:18the question is whether and when they make a decision about do they need to relocate some of their
01:22Manufacturing elsewhere to sort of be able to compete with the tariffs that we're going to be crossing
01:26When we come to the US and Canada in particular it's taken on a rather a personal tone
01:32Hasn't it how much of this is it's just grandstanding if you like and how much of it is actually well thought-out economic policy
01:39Well, I think a lot of businesses did not take Trump at his word in the sitter on the campaign trail
01:44But this is what he really wanted to do that
01:46He wanted to focus on kind of tariff as a revenue source now
01:49That's somewhat undermined by the fact that there's been lots of delays
01:52We know that for example with the Canadians that the threats to put additional taxes on electricity exports from Canada the US
01:59And Donald Trump sort of threatening to double the actual sort of price on
02:04Tariffs coming in on steel for today. Those haven't gone ahead. We know that they're sort of meeting Thursday to negotiate
02:09But it's interesting that actually, you know
02:11The president ultimately has the authority to order the government to actually make these things come into effect
02:17So, you know, he is saying what he's going to do, but there's a little bit of kind of caveating to it
02:22This is a fluid evolving sort of situation. Where do you think this might end as we see sort of countermeasure hitting countermeasure?
02:30Well, I think you have to go back to the fact that if Donald Trump is serious about wanting to use tariffs as a genuine
02:36Revenue source then this doesn't end there is a sort of cumulative layer upon layer
02:40We know that the tariffs today on steel and aluminium are only going to be followed by wider reciprocal tariffs supposedly coming into effect on April
02:472nd so they don't necessarily end the question is where does the retaliation go and I think that the big uncertainty for business and for
02:54Consumers is that increasingly this kind of potential trade war is not being limited to tariff retaliation
02:58We're starting to see it on threats to kind of you know
03:01Withdraw access to let's say the US on procurement markets for other countries and also we're looking at potential
03:08Added non-tariff taxes on things like energy. So that's the big uncertainty is how much wider does this net actually go?