BUSINESS NEWS
Are big deals a big deal?
There has been a lot of positivity, optimism and excitement about the new trade deals recently announced. The Government is celebrating the wins of securing agreements with India, the US, and most recently the EU.
In May, a Free Trade Agreement( FTA) was signed with India. The UK Government described it as a“ huge economic win for the UK”, emphasising the potential of the Indian market with its economy expected to be the third largest in the world by 2028.
The US deal will roll back a small number of tariffs imposed by President Trump earlier this year, including those on imports of cars from the UK. It will also eliminate tariffs on steel exports to the US.
Meanwhile, an agreement with the EU includes greater cooperation with our closest trading partner, including making it easier for food and drink to be imported and exported.
Whilst any deal is likely to be better than no deal, there is a degree of scepticism over just how important they are.
We checked in with Paul Norbury and Max Fortis, two of the region’ s experts on exports, for their takes.
Clarendon Specialty Fasteners is a leading manufacturer and exporter of aerospace-grade fasteners and components, based in Royal Wootton Bassett.
Max Fortis, Sales Director, said,“ As a fastener specialist with growing ties to India’ s expanding aerospace sector, we’ ve witnessed significant growth in bilateral trade over the past year. The UK-India Free Trade Agreement will accelerate this by reducing tariff barriers and streamlining regulatory processes for specialised aerospace components. This means more competitive pricing on imported Indian-made fasteners while making our UK-manufactured products more accessible to Indian aerospace manufacturers. As India establishes itself as a global aerospace hub, this trade agreement positions our company to become an integral part of their supply chain with our critical fastening solutions.
“ The trade deal with the USA will impact us favourably with a reduction in tariffs on aluminium and steel. However, an EU deal will be more important for us as we are still suffering from the red tape generated by Brexit to deal with our biggest export market.”
Devizes-based Cardwave is the world leader in flash memory storage integration and duplication for specialist applications.
Paul Norbury, Chief Executive, said,“ Cardwave specialises in solid-state memory products. We are a global business and we’ ve been supporting customers in the USA for over 20 years. Our US customers have complex supply chains and the majority of the products we ship originate from manufacturing plants in Asia, so this is a topic we need to be following closely. So far, most customers have continued their shipments as normal but a few customers did pause their shipments to the US for a few weeks so they could properly assess what to do. We haven’ t really noticed any change to the business but it’ s still early days and as we all know, changes can happen at any time.”
Whether these new agreements will act as a catalyst for growth is yet to be seen, but in times of economic uncertainty, striking deals with some of the world’ s largest economies is surely a sensible path to take.
THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2025 7