AstraZeneca, Whitehall, and a failed £450m deal for the next generation in vaccines. What went wrong?

When the pharma firm cancelled plans for a major expansion of its Merseyside plant last month, there was no shortage of questions – or blame – over responsibilityAt a tense meeting with senior civil servants on the afternoon of 29 January, the UK chair of AstraZeneca, Shaun Grady, pulled the plug on a planned £450m expansion of its childhood flu vaccine factory in Merseyside – bringing a year and a half of negotiations to an abrupt halt.The decision, announced publicly two days later, came just hours after the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had singled out Britain’s biggest drugmaker as one of the country’s “great companies” in her long-awaited speech on kickstarting UK growth.If successful, the scheme would have transformed the site into a six-hectare research and manufacturing centre producing the next generation of vaccines – strengthening the UK’s pandemic readiness with the ability to make several at a time from start to finish.In July last year, AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, had declared the project in the Liverpool suburb of Speke “absolutely ready to go”. So how did months of wrangling over a £90m state support offer made by the previous government collapse into recriminations?It is not the UK’s first big investment loss in this sector

Why does the US have it in for gig workers?

The US seems to have it in for gig workers and those who use them.California – the fifth-largest economy in the world – has significantly curtailed the ability of companies located there to hire independent contractors and freelancers in lieu of employees. The US Department of Labor has issued updated rules that address worker classifications, which have forced more companies to reclassify their independent contractors as employees in order to be in compliance. New rules from the Internal Revenue Service will now require payment-processing firms to provide additional reporting on the payments made on 1099 forms, the document commonly used to report a freelancer’s earnings.The most recent attack against gig workers comes from the IRS

What do Trump’s tariffs mean for US-China trade?

Donald Trump postponed his threat to tax all imports from Mexico and Canada this week, citing action by those countries against migration and drug smuggling; but it was telling that tariffs on China went ahead.When it comes to the US’s neighbours, Trump’s Treasury secretary, the hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, made clear in a Fox News interview that tariffs are essentially a negotiating tool – partly aimed at achieving non-economic goals.But Trump’s beef with China is a much more longstanding and more widely shared one, that can be traced back to the deep imbalances between the two economic superpowers.“The grievances with China are far more genuine than grievances with Mexico, or with Canada,” says Neil Shearing, the chief economist at the consultancy Capital Economics, who is now writing a book about the clash between the rival economies.So it should not have been a surprise that Trump pressed ahead with promised 10% tariffs on China, which rapidly hit back with levies on a range of US goods

UK urged to close tax loophole to prevent ‘massive influx’ of Shein and Temu goods

Tax campaigners have joined retailers in urging the UK government to close a tax loophole to prevent a “massive influx” of cheap goods from companies such as Shein and Temu flooding the market.It comes after the EU said it was joining the US in phasing out an exemption on customs duties for low-value parcels that has been used by the companies to export goods from China cheaply.The rule changes are seen as likely to hit trade into the EU and US by marketplaces such as Shein, prompting a report by Reuters that the online seller will have to cut the valuation of its hoped-for London stock market listing to $50bn (£40bn), about 20% below previous expectations.Paul Monaghan‬, the chief executive of the Fair Tax Foundation, said that in the light of the rule changes in the EU and US, the UK “can expect a massive influx of even more Shein and Temu products”, unless action was taken. “The government needs to tighten the gaping UK VAT and import tax loopholes as soon as possible to protect consumers and keep the high street alive

UK can’t say ‘job done’ on fighting inflation, says Bank of England’s Huw Pill

The Bank of England is not in a position to declare “job done” in tackling inflation amid concerns over rising prices hitting households, Threadneedle Street’s chief economist, Huw Pill, has said.Speaking a day after the central bank cut interest rates and slashed its growth forecasts for 2025, Pill warned that a “cautious” approach to further interest rate reductions would be required as inflation pressures remained.Highlighting resilience in average wage growth, he said there were signs that price pressures were not coming out of the economy as much as the Bank had hoped late last year.“That means that we’re not in a situation where we can declare job done,” he said, speaking at a National MPC Agency briefing. “I think that is a reason for caution, for carefulness in the way we proceed with removing monetary policy restriction and cutting bank rate

US job creation slowed in January; UK can’t say ‘job done’ fighting inflation, say’s BoE’s Pill – as it happened

Newsflash: Job creation across the US has slowed at the start of Donald Trump’s second term, after a blistering finish to 2024.US non-farm payrolls rose by 143,000 in January, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows. That’s weaker than the 170,000 new jobs expected last month.It’s also a sharp slowdown on December, where the BLS has revised up its estimates and now says payrolls rose by 307,000, 51,000 more than its initial estimate of 256,000.The US unemployment rate edged down to 4