Responding to the latest ONS data on trade, William Bain, Head of Trade Policy at the BCC, said:
“It’s clear there was significant front loading of goods exports to the US before April as firms looked to cushion the impact of tariffs.
“We should always be cautious about reading too much into a single month’s data, but goods exports fell by 14.6% in value terms, compared with April 2024.
“The month-on-month comparison shows goods exports values to the US fell by almost a third between March and April – the largest monthly drop on record since 1997. There were reductions in goods exports to the US across multiple sectors.
“Firms are resilient, and the underlying picture is not entirely negative. Taking the last three months data, UK services exports rose by 2.2% according to ONS estimates and goods exports by 2% overall in value terms.
“Modest services export growth bucked the trend, but overall, the economic effects of the US tariffs are now a reality. Thousands of UK exporters are dealing with lower orders and higher supply chain and customer costs.
“Implementing the UK-US Economic Prosperity Deal as soon as possible on car, steel and aluminium tariffs is crucial. But we must not stop there, we need to build upon the agreement to reduce tariffs in other goods sectors suffering an economic hit.”
Goods Exports
UK goods exports slumped by 8.1% in the month of April in volume terms, which exclude inflation. Sales volumes to the EU fell by 4.4%, reversing gains from March.
The rest of the world saw a double-digit percentage drop in April – 11.8%.
Services
Services exports bucked the trend in April. The ONS estimated they rose by 0.5% in volume terms while imports to the UK fell by 0.8%.
US Trade
Data on UK exports to the US (including services) is available on a different value metric. Month-on-month they fell by the largest amount since records began in 1997 – 32.7% in a single month as tariffs hit multiple sectors of the traded goods economy.
From early April, tariffs on car exports to the US rose to 27.5%. Other sectors, from chemicals to food to industrial products to clothing, saw additional 10% tariffs applied to UK exports. Steel and aluminium tariffs of 25% have applied to primary and derivative products of UK origin since 12 March.
Compared with April 2024 export data, UK exports to the US were 14.6% lower in value terms this April.
More detail on the ONS data can be found here.