Whatever the bluster the bottom line of the Trump Tariffs is to make the rich, richer and the poor, across the globe, poorer. Whether it will actually turn out like that we’ll see, planning not being of interest to Trump.
The Financial Times front page on 5th July 2025 picks up on that with a story focused on the concerns of European and Mexican Big Beer.
The 25% tariff on European Beer could the FT reports lead to 100,000 job losses and brewery closures. Since the companies involved also operate in the UK it remains to be understood (but not by Trump obviously) how this will work. A key issue it appears is whether the tariff is on aluminium cans only or beer as well.
Global Big Beer is of course organised and its lobby group Brewers of Europe includes ABInBev, Carlsberg, Asahi, Heineken and Molson Coors.
The combined group exported 870 million Euros worth of beer to the US in 2024 and the estimate sees a potential 100,000 job losses from the two million employed.
In Mexico 85% of US imports come from Constellation which brews Corona and Modela.
However it plays out we can be certain that if a price is to be paid it will by brewery workers and beer drinkers not the profits of Big Beer.
Revealed: Sgt Knacker Burns has defected to Coronation St
A few weeks back Sgt Knacker Burns was effectively written out as he was despatched Oop North on a special project.
It can now be revealed that the special project was to play the role of Theo a Scaffolder in Coronation St. As the story line develops he has been revealed as the love interest for Todd Grimshaw, aka Gareth Pierce who played Gavin Moss in the Archers.
Small world..
Vince Casey admits he is a dinosaur
In discussion with Rochelle, Vince Casey has admitted he is a dinosaur, which by the laws of dialectics means he isn’t quite.
Rochelle, Trumpist
Rochelle has reappeared and is now playing the role of disrupter. Some no doubt will see this in sexual terms but it’s actually about mixing up and unsettling relationships in Ambridge. Joy has walked out (not as far as can be checked for Corrie), Rex has been made to feel a bit awkward and Freddie and Vince have been engaged with. Where is it leading? It’s the Archers. We’ll find out later.
Don’t mention Palestine
Charlotte Higgins who has the role that Nancy Brooks Smith had of writing a monthly summary of Ambridge events for the Grauniad is taking a sabbatical but not before she noted quite rightly that one word that is never heard in the Archers is Palestine
Starmer became the Labour candidate for Holborn and St Pancras in December 2014 and was elected as an MP in May 2015 at the General Election of that year, so it is in that short window of early 2015, ten years ago
The Daily Telegraph which remains without a substantive owner has only a vague relationship with reality in 2025.
It carried a long piece on upper class layabout Lady Victoria Helvey on 5th April. She has been hanging out with Farage and Truss in the US and in particular at Trump HQ Mar A Lago. One detail is that she claims Trump has said that Boris Johnson is going Woke.
No further evidence is provided but Helvey is currently a supporter of Farage’s political business Reform, so this may be no more than political infighting on the far right, where Johnson, who remains a Tory, is the subject of derision because he will not (at the moment) take the political knee to Farage.
Very little that Trump says is true- a mixture of a deliberate strategy and a degree of incoherence- and the same is true of Johnson. Checking the record of the last 5 years on occasion Johnson has said there is nothing wrong with Woke, while on others he has used it as a term of political condemnation (on the BBC)
Does it matter? It shouldn’t and wouldn’t were not the media hanging on every utterance of Trump and in doing so trying to shape people’s views.
The above letters appeared in the Times on 4th April 2025. They can perhaps be summed up by noting Kemi Badenoch is too rude, even with the reported help of Lord Dave Cameron.
E P Thompson in his collection, Writing By Candelight, argued that Times letter writers captured a certain strand of often provincial and definitely reactionary thought and had done so for many years.
Earlier Times commentary noted that because Badenoch had not been to Eton (not eligible) like many previous Tory leaders and therefore lacked the required debating skills which it appears is one of the main things Eton teaches students.
You can pick up the same skills free of charge by addressing a trade union meeting btw not that Badenoch will be doing that either.
Update
As to prove the Times letter writers right Badenoch had a further outburst on the Sunday round of news programmes on 6th April 2025. Asked for her view on two British Parliamentarians who were barred from entering Israel on Saturday, Badenoch backed not the Parliamentarians but the Israeli Government.
Liz Truss wants US-UK trade deal but warns The Blob may sabotage it
Liz Truss has so far said nothing on the Trump Tariffs, although it might have been thought that a note of admiration for Trump causing even more economic chaos than she managed when briefly PM would have been in order.
However on Twitter she has called on Starmer to do a free trade deal with Trump on the same basis as the one she did with Australia when Trade Minister. Essentially this allowed free access for Australian agricultural production to the UK market without getting anything obvious in return.
Right-wing Tory Minister George Eustice criticised the deal on this basis. When Truss became PM in September 2022 she sacked him.
Let’s hope the Blob actively intervenes if there is a UK-US trade deal to make sure its not just not everything Trump wants, as Truss would no doubt like
We support the right of self-determination for penguins We believe in peaceful co-existence between penguins, albatross and humans We claim the Heard & McDonald Islands as an autonomous Penguin Republic We believe that penguins should receive the full benefits of guano production.
The lottery of the Trump Tariffs will have an impact on global beer and whisky producers but quite what remains to be understood.
Taking the case of Diageo which produces Johnnie Walker whisky and Guinness, the whisky sold in the US looks like attracting a 10% tax. Guinness is brewed in Dublin and so might get a 20% hit but Diageo is actually listed on the London Stock Exchange so who knows, least of all Trump.
The Sunday Times Business News (6th April 2025) reports that Diageo produces whisky and tequila for the US market in Mexico and Canada where Trump has not imposed tariffs. Diageo expects to make a £350 million profit on that basis, unless of course Trump changes his mind again.
Diaego shares fell ahead of the tariff announcement but the view now seems to be that alcohol sales won’t be hit that much, and where they are it will be EU rather than UK because of the higher tax (Times 3rd April). Not for nothing did Marx describe capitalists as a gang of warring brothers.
However this is Trump world. A recently opened MAGA friendly French style restaurant and bar in Washington, Butterworths, is reportedly getting through 4 kegs of Guinness a day and that might qualify Diageo for a special exemption..
Politics on the left. The importance of ‘ad hoc local initiatives’
Owen Jones latest Guardian article rightly condemns Labour’s benefit cuts. Its not a new thing for a Labour Government, Blair also did it, but the scale is wider.
He looks at the prospects for the left beyond Labour. Several things might be said.
While Starmer’s Labour is on the right-wing of social democracy the fundamental relationship that formed Labour in 1900 between trade union leaders & Parliamentary presence remains. While capitalism continues there will be space for a party trying to reform it. That might not be Labour but the impulse to try reform (not Reform) remains.
In terms of building an alternative Jones finds the Greens lacking. My view is that just as Labour is a Party with some socialists in it, so the Greens are a party with some of leftish views in it. Not rooted in the labour movement however its subject to swings of perspective.
Jones also wants ‘leadership’ which reminds me (and probably very few others of the Socialist Labour League). That said I’m in favour of leadership it’s a question of where it comes from.
I don’t agree with Jones rather dismissive approach to ‘ad hoc local initiatives’. They are one of the more likely routes into a new formation of the left. As E P Thompson noted in Homage to Tom Maguire, the Independent Labour Party was not founded in London Head Offices but ‘in those shadowy parts known as the Provinces’
Some continue supporting Labour in lieu of an alternative: according to YouGov, more Labour voters than not now disapprove of the government, an astonishing statistic given the party’s support has plummeted to less than a quarter of the electorate. Some stop voting. Some may opt for the Greens, but its four MPs have failed to offer any cut-through leadership, despite uniquely fertile circumstances. Others defect to independent candidates, but their success is based on ad hoc local initiatives. And, bleakly, others may opt for Reform UK, which fills the vacuum as the ultimate protest vote, even though the party backs cutting benefits for disabled people, increasing privatisation of the NHS and slashing taxes for the rich.
Some responses appear in the Guardian on 7th April. Its a debate but hopefully not one that starts from the idea of organising a new leftish formulation focused from above on Parliamentary politics. They are important but building from below well beyond the confines of London SW1 must be the start, as it was for the Independent Labour Party over 130 years ago now
