In the first half of 2025, the US and some of its trading partners announced significant changes to import tariffs. This column uses newly designed questions to study the impact of these changes on UK firms and to assess the level of trade uncertainty. On average, the majority of firms expect no material impact on their sales, investment, and prices; those that do expect it to be a relatively small negative impact. Tariffs are a new source of uncertainty for firms, although the level of uncertainty remains lower than for previous shocks such as Brexit, Covid-19, or the Russia-Ukraine war.

---

27 July 2025

---

Vox EU

---

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/impact-2025-us-tariff-announcements-uk-firms

This Blog is published under the centre's Growth programme.

This publication comes under the following theme: UK productivity and policy