Donald Trump’s Spotify playlist features Sinéad O’Connor, Metallica and The Rolling Stones. On the evidence of the past few days, he should also include Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’. It is surely the theme for the first week of his return to the presidency.
This week has been very different from his previous four years in office. It started very slowly and then descended into a revolving door of hiring and firings, and a series of spectacularly unfocused and often entirely random policy initiatives. These first few days have been a sharp contrast. We have seen a dizzying collection of over 100 executive orders built around a coherent – if extraordinary – policy agenda by a highly competent, though scary, team. And all to the ‘giddy’ approval of corporate America.
The president is serious. He’s serious about immigration. He is serious about cutting taxes and driving growth. He is serious about the demolition of climate change legislation, ESG and even more serious about ‘Drill, baby, drill’. He’s serious about taking an axe to diversity policies and firing all those who implement them. He’s serious about retribution from those who he believes victimised him. If your US business is on the wrong side of those issues, as far as the president is concerned, you are headed for the outer darkness.
Most of all, he is serious that to Make America Great Again he will put America First. He intends to deploy tariffs as economic ballistic missiles and is perfectly prepared to fire them at neighbours (Canada and Mexico), friends (Colombia and Denmark) and foes (China and Russia) alike. The world has been warned.
President Trump revels in his own unpredictability. It’s his superpower. But we can safely predict there will be much more use of tariffs. They will target perceived trade imbalances with countries unwilling to commit to take more US-made goods or to site factories in the US, or more probably both. Even though in the UK we have a trade deficit with the US, that won’t stop Trump pressurising successful UK food manufacturers to switch production of US-bound goods across the Atlantic.
So UK businesses should be studying their risk registers intently and expansively. They should consider every foreign-based operation that might be caught up in disputes with the US. At home, President Trump will also probably use tariffs and additional tax reprisals on non-US companies and personnel to correct what he sees as the discrimination of the OECD Tax Equalisation Pact. So UK companies should be ready for that eventuality.
The UK food industry also needs to be very clear and united on what it would see as acceptable concessions in any UK-US trade deal. Prime Minister Starmer is on record as wanting ‘some sort’ of deal. That is massively vague. It could conceivably mean accepting US chicken or beef as a makeweight for deals involving stateside benefits for other sectors. Whatever happens, the food industry needs to pull its act together and offer a united front on what it wants, the nature of its red lines, and how far it will go to preserve them.
Finally, there are the indirect consequences of Trump’s accession. Leaders are reacting, taking previously unthought-of positions. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is transformed into Captain Growth, commissioning extra runways and taking a blowtorch to the planning system. Meanwhile, Commission vice president Kovacs suggests a new customs union. His astonishing proposal includes 27-plus other nations, with the UK there first in not-very-invisible ink. So – depending on your view – it’s not all bad news.
The most important advice for company and industry leaders in these new circumstances is to ensure you have considered what might happen to your business and what you would do if it did. President Trump brings huge risks to non-American businesses. But he also brings significant opportunity for those prepared to be daring.
My guess is that much will move very soon indeed, and then very speedily. For it is certain the next Trump playlist also includes ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’.
Ian Wright is a partner at Acuti Associates
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