It’s been a significant week in international trade, including the leaders of the world’s two most powerful nations meeting, a UN General Assembly and further politicking over the EU's drive to for more domestic production.
Big picture: A number of EU trade announcements have been made ahead of the Labour Party Conference, which begins on Sunday (27 September).
On Friday, the FT exclusively reported that the EU has urged the UK to place tariffs on Chinese autos in order to gain favourable terms within the bloc’s ‘Made in Europe’ domestic procurement drive.
The policy is a response to the threat of cheap Chinese imports of manufactured goods threatening European industry.
In addition to alignment on this area of trade policy, an EU official told the publication that “a customs union would solve most of the problems of ‘made in Europe’”.
That comment follows former Labour prime minister Tony Blair’s intervention into the ‘Made in Europe’ debate on Thursday, urging PM Andy Burnham to abandon the ‘red lines’ on an EU customs union and single market return set out in party’s 2024 election manifesto, and work towards rejoining the EU over the next decade.
The current Labour administration has been working on a trio of deals with Brussels, on sanitary and phytosanitary goods trade, electricity trading and youth mobility, set to confirmed at a much-delayed bilateral summit. The UK’s push to discuss a favourable ‘Made in Europe’ arrangement for its own exporters has threatened to further delay the meeting.
Good week/bad week: Good news for global trade, as Trump and Xi agreed to extend their trade truce until next January.
The deal, confirmed in October 2025, normalised exports of critical minerals after China has threatened curbs and limited the tit-for-tat tariff escalation that saw levies reach triple digits.
“That is going to be extended until January 10 to give us more time to see what we can do on the economic front,” US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, told Fox News.
“I don’t know whether a bigger deal can be done. I don’t know whether we will just roll the current deal.”
He also hinted that there’d be further announcements on financial services and agricultural purchases.
Reviewing past deals between the two since the trade truce began, Politico reported that pledges made by China to buy greater volumes of farm products and soybeans, have not been met.
The Chinese president visited his counterpart in Washington DC this week to talk trade, Taiwan and tech.
The Guardian reports that food industry leaders have warned the UK's food trade deficit poses a significant risk to the nation's food security.
Research by the Food and Drink Federation showed that, rising to more than £21bn, the country's food deficit - the difference between exports and imports - has risen to the highest level since 2000.
The president of the National Farmers' Union Tom Bradshaw said the figure should be "a wake-up call".
"At a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty, we cannot afford to take our food production capacity for granted.”
However, it's not just geopolitical threats challenging food security – UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband warned world leaders at a private UN meeting that extreme El Nino weather patterns will place pressure on national defences.
“We face an El Niño that is already set to be the most intense in living memory,” Miliband told leaders on Wednesday (23 September).
“This will intensify climate shocks that compound and cascade across borders, threatening food and water security, displacing communities, putting pressure on markets and scarring economies.”
How’s stat? 40,000. That’s the number of apprenticeships the government is creating within the UK’s defence supply chain.
Amid a drive to rearm and reindustrialise, as well as reduce the growing number of young people designated not in education, employment or training (Neet), defence secretary Wes Streeting said that he’s running a “ministry for growth”.
The announcement also comes ahead of this year’s Autumn Budget in which chancellor John Healey may need to defend scrapping a defence spending target of 3% of GDP by 2030 – a target he resigned over when serving as defence minister under former PM Sir Keir Starmer.
Quote of the week: “There are increasing mechanisms in place to support the UK SME exporting community, but there is also room to drive wider technological adoption and deepen cross-border trade tech facilitation. Through effective government and industry partnership, SME exporting can be energised as a clear route to growth.”
Chartered Institute UK public affairs lead Grace Thompson discussing techUK’s report ‘Economy 2030: An Agenda for Tech-Enabled Growth’, which the Chartered Institute contributed to, providing a foreword and insight for the chapter on trade and technology.
The week in customs: We’re in the final week before several key pieces of customs legislation enter into force.
From 1 October, the UK’s Vaping Products Duty regime comes into effect, requiring stakeholders bringing products to the UK market to register with HMRC, vaping products imported or manufactured for the UK market to carry stamps, and introducing an excise duty of £2.20 per 10ml on all vaping products – even those without nicotine.
The full compliance requirements are outlined in this Vaping Products Duty how-to guide.
Exporters in European steel supply chains should also heed the introduction of the EU’s new ‘melt and pour’ rules, setting out new documentary requirements for imported steel. An explainer on what steel firms need to do to comply with those requirements, also coming into force on 1 October, is also available.
Traders should also be mindful that this weekend will feature a longer-than-usual period of downtime for the Customs Declaration Service (CDS).
HMRC has highlighted that from 7pm Saturday 26th September 2026 until 8.30am Sunday 27th September 2026 the service will be unavailable to users.
To understand the implications for imports and exports, check out the full notice here.
What else we covered: Members can read about the EU’s update of its Russia sanctions list, which attracted controversy this week when two Russian billionaires were removed from the list after internal lobbying, in Export Controls Brief.
We explored what the EU’s associate members offer could look like in practice, as well as which countries beyond Canada could be brought in the fold.
There was also a review of the UK’s open trade deal negotiations.
True facts: The week’s leading export ban threat was Trump backing calls from politicians in the US’s agricultural heartlands to stop selling diesel overseas.
However, another notable ban was raised by the Philippines which is weighing up a ban on exports of ube – a sweet potato variety having a viral coffee and dessert moment, akin to matcha.
The FT reports that following the sudden surge in demand, the world’s largest ube producer is planning to cap international sales in order to capitalise on the plant’s newfound popularity.
The country’s agriculture secretary Francisco P Tiu Laurel Jr said that “we severely lack planting material ourselves, and we don’t want to export it to countries that could use Philippine ube varieties to compete with us”.
