The UK’s private sector went into decline for the first time in 1 1/2 years, as new export orders fell at the fastest rate in almost five years, in a sign that trade wars are taking their toll on the British economy.Weaker demand from international markets weighed on business activity in both the manufacturing and service sectors, according to a closely watched survey.At 48.2 in April, down from 51.5 in March, the headline ‘flash’ reading from S&P Global was below the 50 mark (that separates expansion from contraction) for the first time since October 2023.

While signalling only a modest rate of decline, the latest reading was the lowest since November 2022.Firms talked about the negative impact of US tariffs and a subsequent slump in confidence among clients.Optimism about the year ahead also slumped, to its lowest level since October 2022.Many companies flagged concerns about worsening global economic prospects in the wake of US tariffs, as well as subdued confidence regarding the outlook for domestic business conditions.Service providers recorded a slight decline in business activity during April, which ended a 17-month period of expansion.

Rising global economic uncertainty and subdued domestic demand conditions were cited as the main factors.Manufacturers recorded a fall in production volumes for the sixth successive month.The latest decline was the steepest since August 2022 and widely attributed to weakening market conditions, especially in key export markets.Peel Hunt’s chief economist Kallum Pickering said:UK April PMIs reflecting the hit from global trade anxieties more than other parts of Europe - first drop in private output for 1.5 years.

,,,#pmis #ukeconomy #ukmacro #economy pic,twitter.

com/OSIkTnhzoaStock markets are rallying in Asia, Europe and the US and the dollar has risen.Anxiety among investors has given way to relief, at least for now, after Donald Trump said his tariffs on China would come down “substantially” and he had “no intention” of firing the chair of the American central bank, Jay Powell.The German stock market leapt 3.2% while the UK’s FTSE 100 is 1.1% ahead, and the Nasdaq in New York jumped by 3.

95.The dollar is up by 0.5% against a basket of major currencies.The rally comes despite gloomy business surveys for the UK, Europe and the US that show trade tariffs and uncertainty are beginning to take their toll.Meanwhile gold, seen as a safe-haven investment in times of turmoil dropped back by 3.

2% to $3,277 an ounce,Yesterday, it broke through $3,500 an ounce,Our other main stories:Thank you for reading,We’ll be back tomorrow,Bye! – JKBusiness activity in the US has hit a 16-month low as confidence slumped, and companies raised their prices at a faster rate, according to a survey that showed a negative impact from Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The headline US PMI Composite Output Index from S&P Global fell from 53,5 in March to 51,2 in April, according to the preliminary ‘flash’ reading,This means the private sector is still expanding, but at a slower row, after a three-month high in March,Growth with the services sector slowed sharply to only a modest pace, registering the second-weakest expansion recorded over the past year, in response to slower order book growth.

Firms flagged uncertainty surrounding the economy and tariffs.Demand growth was subdued in particular by a fall in exports of services (which include tourism-related activities as well as cross-border activities by service providers) on a scale not seen since January 2023.Manufacturing output meanwhile edged back into growth after slipping into decline in March, though the expansion was only marginal.Whilst new orders placed at factories rose at a slightly faster rate, linked to higher domestic orders, the increase was only modest and curbed by a marked fall in export orders.While tariffs had in some instances reportedly helped drive new sales to domestic customers, trade policy was widely linked to falling foreign sales.

Sentiment among companies about their output over the coming year fell for a third successive month, dropping sharply to register the least optimistic outlook since July 2022.The latest reading was the joint-second lowest since September 2020, surpassed only by October 2022.US stocks have jumped on Wall Street, joining a global stock market rally, after president Donald Trump reassured investors by saying he had no plans to fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, hinted at lower tariffs for China.The S&P 500 was 2.9% higher in early trading, following yesterday’s 2.

5% gain that came after heavy losses on Monday,The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 967 points, or 2,5%, and the Nasdaq composite leapt by 3,7%,Wall Street’s gains followed strong moves higher for stocks across much of Europe and Asia.

The market will “more likely than not continue to be dictated by Trump’s latest whims regarding tariffs and trade,” said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade.After downgrading its growth forecasts and highlighting mounting financial stability risks yesterday, the International Monetary Fund is kicking off Wednesday in Washington with more depressing news, our economics editor Heather Stewart reports from the US capital.In its Fiscal Monitor, it is warning that government debt levels are set to jump in the coming years, as a result of the volatility unleashed by Donald Trump’s tariffs, alongside geopolitical tensions.The IMF’s analysts project global government debt increasing by 2.8% of GDP this year - twice as fast as in 2024 - and hitting 100% of GDP by the end of the decade, back at levels seen in the Covid pandemic.

And it goes on to warn that in a “severely adverse scenario,” in which the trade war escalates further, or geopolitical tensions worsen, public debt could hit 117% of global GDP, the highest level since the second world war.“As significant policy changes and heightened uncertainty reshape the global economic landscape, the fiscal outlook has worsened,” the IMF says.The Washington-based lender also underlines concerns that emerging economies may be hit especially hard, if funding costs in global markets increase as a result of financial market volatility in the US - a situation that it says may be exacerbated by overseas aid cuts.A watchdog has partially upheld complaints about Octopus Energy ads made by rival British Gas that they could mislead customers about the savings they could make when switching.The Octopus ads across social media, radio and billboards claimed “Most homes would save with Octopus“, while an email on October 7 stated: “We’ve been notified by another supplier that you’ll be switching to them.

..Will they really save you money? We’re generally the cheapest or near enough: in fact, nine out of 10 Octopus customers pay less than they could with any other large supplier on the same product.”British Gas complained that only consumers currently on a standard variable tariff (SVT) with another supplier would save money.Octopus said the ads were intended to highlight the potential savings that a significant majority of consumers currently on standard tariffs could achieve if they switched to the supplier.

It told the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that it did not claim that Octopus was the cheapest supplier in every scenario or for every tariff type, adding that it would be willing to make changes to its advertising,The ASA said consumers would understand from the claims that energy bills would be cheaper for most households if they were to switch to Octopus from any other provider,The regulator understood that 80% of gas customers and 71% of electricity customers with other providers were on their supplier’s default SVT,It noted that Ofgem data from June 2024, based on average annual tariffs in the preceding quarter, showed that Octopus had the cheapest SVT of the seven major suppliers, saying:We considered that those customers who switched from a non-Octopus SVT to an Octopus SVT were therefore likely to achieve a saving,Because those potential customers constituted the majority of UK households, we considered that most homes could or would potentially save money.

However, the watchdog understood that consumers who were on a fixed tariff with another supplier might not necessarily save if they switched to Octopus, while Octopus customers on an SVT seeking to move onto a fixed tariff might get a greater saving if they switched to another supplier.The ASA said:Because the ads did not make clear that the claims that most homes ‘could’ or ‘would’ save applied only to consumers on non-Octopus SVTs who chose to switch to an Octopus SVT, we considered they were likely to mislead.Regarding the claim that Octopus was “generally the cheapest or near enough”, the ASA found that other types of tariff, such as fixed rate tariffs, could be cheaper with another large supplier, ruling: “Because the ad did not make clear the basis of the claim, we considered that it was misleading.”The watchdog explained:The ads must not appear again in their current form.We told Octopus Energy to ensure that they included adequate substantiation to support claims, including comparisons with identifiable competitors, in their marketing materials and to make the basis of any claim clear in their advertising.

We also told them to ensure that any comparative claims were verifiable.An Octopus Energy spokesman said:The ASA confirmed the headline in our advert - that most homes could save with Octopus - but asked for a little bit more clarification in the small print, which we were delighted to add.AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot has added his voice to other European pharmaceutical bosses calling for higher spending on medicines in Europe.The world order is shifting right now and Europe needs to invest more in what really matters to it.Europe has stepped up to invest more in defence and now it must protect its health sovereignty.

Europe spends a substantially lower share of GDP on innovative medicines than the US and, as a result, is falling behind in attracting R&D and manufacturing investments, putting its ability to protect the health of its own people at risk,The chief executives of Swiss drugmaker Novartis and France’s Sanofi have called on the EU to increase drug prices to bring them more into line with those paid by the US, arguing it will encourage innovation –- i,e,the development of new treatments,Several major European pharma companies have announced total investments of more than $150bn in the US in recent weeks, at least in part intended to head off potentially punitive Donald Trump tariffs.

The latest was Switzerland’s Roche with a $50bn investment in US manufacturing over the next five years unveiled yesterday,In a letter to the Financial Times published today, Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan and Sanofi’s Paul Hudson, argue that the European Commission should set a spending target for medicines and vaccines to “fairly reward innovation”,European price controls and austerity measures reduce the attractiveness of its markets,Launch prices are suppressed, patented medicines’ growth capped, and prices reduced when new applications are found,The US and China are finding ways to incentivise innovation, while Europe is penalising it.

The US pays nearly three times as much for branded and generic medicines as other comparable countries, according to US government estimates.The EU should create a Europe-wide list price for medicines “within range of US net prices”, the pharma bosses say, adding that this could be adjusted though rebates for some countries.Secondly, they argue that the EU should also set a Europe-wide spend target for innovative medicines and vaccines.The letter points to data that 30% of medicines approved in the US are still not available in Europe after two years.Narasimhan and Hudson add:Over time it is inevitable that clinical trials and R&D [research & development] will further shift to the US and China.

The letter comes after pharma bosses wrote to European commission president Ursula von der Leyen earlier this month to warn that “unless Europe delivers rapid, radical policy change then pharmaceutical research, development and manufacturing is increasingly likely to be directed towards the US”.The EU’s average government spending on health in 2022 was 7.7% of GDP.By comparison, the US spent 16.5% of its GDP on healthcare in 2023.

Croda International said it plans to pass on any additional costs from US tariffs to its customers, as the UK chemical maker seeks to shore up profits in a high-inflation environment,The 100-year-old company, based in Snaith in Yorkshire, said:Although our well-balanced local manufacturing and procurement model helps to mitigate our direct exposure to tariffs, we are assessing the likely impact and intend to apply a tariff surcharge to cover any associated incremental costs,Its share price rose as much as 10% and later traded 7,5% higher, despite a drop in 2024 sales and profits,However in the first quarter, sales rose by 9% to £442m at constant exchange rates, and Croda stuck to its profit forecast for this year.

Analysts are forecasting a pretax profit of £209.8m, according to a company poll.The company, which makes ingredients and specialty chemicals for clients across the beauty, agriculture, pharmaceutical and industrial sectors, had already announced plans for £25m in cost-saving measures to help counter rising costs.With alternative sources of supply limited in many cases, Croda‘s plans to pass on any incremental costs from tariffs to customers may be something clients will have to accept, according to analysts at Hargreaves Lansdown.Companies worldwide are digesting the impact of the global trade war sparked by US president Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which has fuelled fears of a recession.

Croda’s sales from North America accounted for almost 24% of its annual revenue in 2024.The European Commission has fined Apple €500m (£429m) and Meta €200m for breaking rules on fair competition and user choice, in the first penalties issued under one of the EU’s landmark internet laws.The fines under the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is intended to ensure fair business practices by tech companies, are likely to provide another flashpoint with Donald Trump’s administration, which has fiercely attacked Europe’s internet regulation.The commission fined Apple €500m for restricting app developers from distributing apps outside the company’s App Store.It said app developers could not fully benefit from alternative channels, so consumers could not discover cheaper offers