UK US Trade and Tariffs: Real Stats

Reading the recent tariff news out of America, our first thought was: how much does the UK really charge in tariffs on imports from the US? Is it the 10% that Trump will charge? To find out, we dug into real trade and tariff data from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Office for National Statistics (ONS). Here's what we found.

• What is a tariff?
• Top UK Trading Partners
• Historical US - UK Trade
• Actual UK Tariffs
• Actual US Tariffs -- are proposed tariffs really reciprocal?
  • Error in tariff calculation

Note: this article focuses on trade in "goods" not trade in "services".

What is a tariff?

A tariff is an amount (typically a %) charged to whomever is importing a good or service into a country. It is NOT paid by the country or company exporting the good.

Companies exporting the good could theoretically lower their prices to eat some of the tariff cost, which they may do in order to keep their product's end price competitive in the target market.

But they may not want or be able to do so, resulting in the importing company and ultimately the end consumer paying the cost of the tariff.

Top UK Trading Partners

The USA is the UK's top trading partner for goods (this doesn't reflect services). More than £116 billion of goods is traded back and forth between the countries, made up of £59.3 billion of goods moving from the UK to the US, and £57.1 billion of goods moving from the US to the UK.

UK Goods Exports

In terms of goods (excluding services), the top UK export markets are the US (including Puerto Rico), Germany and the Netherlands. The US receives 16.2% of the UK's exports, equivalent to £59.3 billion.

UK Goods Imports

Germany sends the most goods into the UK—£71.8 billion, which is 12.1% of UK imports. Next is China (£65 billion, or 11%) and the USA including Puerto Rico (£57.1 billion, or 9.7%).

Historical US - UK Trade

Overall goods trade between the US and UK has risen a bit over the past seven years—goods moving from the UK to the US has remained somewhat steady, only rising 1.7% over 7 years. But goods moving from the US to the UK have increased 37% over the same time period, from £41.6 billion to £57.1 billion.

Source: ONS

In addition to trade in 'goods', there is significant trade in 'services' between the US and the UK. While we have figures for 'goods' for 2024, the 2024 figures for 'services' haven't been released yet.

Here we display figures for 2023, since that's the last complete year of data—just to show the relative proportions of goods and services traded between the UK and the US.

Source: ONS

You may notice a few small differences in figures above—sometimes data may be impacted by rounding, or seasonal/non-seasonally adjustments or varying data sources. Also, data may be updated after it is released.

Average UK Tariffs

According to the WTO, the trade-weighted average tariff on goods imported from all countries to the UK is 3.5%.

What is a trade-weighted tariff?

A trade-weighted tariff is the average tariff charged, where the tariffs are not evenly weighted, but weighted according to the amount of trade.

For example, say £10 billion of product A is imported and subject to a tariff of 1% and £1 billion of product B is imported and subject to a tariff of 10%, it would be misleading to simply average 1% and 10% and say the average tariff is 5.5%. Why? Because the bulk of the imports were product A, which is only subject to a 1% tariff.

Instead, it is more accurate to calculate a 'trade-weighted' tariff to determine the average tariff that was actually paid.

In this example, you'd get a trade-weighted tariff of 1.8%—i.e. ((£10 billion x 1%) + (£1 billion x 10%))/(£10 billion + £1 billion) = 1.8%.

The trade-weighted average being lower than the simple average implies that lower tariffs are charged on higher volume goods.

What is a MFN tariff?

MFN tariffs are terminology used by the World Trade Organization (WTO). MFN stands for 'Most Favored Nation', and MFN rates are tariffs that countries set on imports from other members of the WTO—unless the country is part of a preferential trade agreement, e.g. a free trade area or customs union like the European Union.

MFN rates are therefore the highest (most expensive, worst case) that WTO members charge one another for a given good.

A country may impose higher tariffs on countries that are not part of the WTO.

Tariffs can vary widely from one product to another. Next, we look at the tariffs on the most-imported goods to the UK.

Tariff schedule for top imports to UK

Here is a list of the top 10 goods imports to the UK, and the average MFN duties applied to these products—they range from 0.7% (on minerals and metals, as well as wood, paper and furniture) up to 11.4% (clothing).

Source: WTO profile of UK

If we calculate a weighted average of these top 10 imports to the UK, we get 1.75%. That is, the top ten imports, accounting for 90% of imports to the UK, have a weighted average tariff of 1.75% imposed on them. But this "average" rate can vary by trading partner, because different countries trade a different mix of goods back and forth.

Trying to understand if the UK actually imposes a 10% tariff rate on imports from the US, as suggested by Trump (or, in fact, if his figures to any trading partners make sense), next let's look at average tariffs actually paid on US exports to the US's largest trading partners.

How big are import tariffs on US exports?

The trade-weighted average duty paid on US goods to its five largest trade partners ranged from 0.5% (UK) to 4.1% (China).

Note, Trump said that the UK charges 10% on imports from the US (and used this as justification for his choice of reciprocal tariff). This is simply not true. The average tariffs on US exports entering the UK is 0.5%—not 10%.

Here are the trade-weighted MFN duties faced on goods exported from the US to it's 5 major trade partners, as well as Trump's proposed "reciprocal" tariffs on imports from these countries:

As you can see from the actual, real-life data, US goods being exported to other countries are subject to much lower import tariffs than those being imposed by the US. We can't see how the proposed tariffs could be justified as being "reciprocal", as you can see in the side-by-side tariff comparison below:

For example, the actual MFN trade-weighted average tariff charged on US non-agricultural goods entering the UK is 0.5% (the bulk of the trade flow is non-ag), which is a fraction of Trump's proposed 10% "reciprocal" tariff.

The above table shows existing tariff figures for both non-agricultural goods, which represent 90% of US exports to the top 5 US export markets, and agricultural goods, which represent 10% of US export trade to its top 5 trading partners. Tariffs imposed on agricultural goods tend to be higher, ranging from 4.2% (EU) to 22.6% (Japan), but these volumes are significantly lower than non-ag goods for US trade.

Note: Trump's tariffs are in flex and may vary by product. For example, he has threatened 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from Canada; and he has threatened a 250% tariff on dairy products from Canada.

Source: WTO tariff profiles

Error in tariff formula calculations on Gov website

In our opinion, there is an error in the Reciprocal Tariff Calculation on the Executive Office of the Present: Office of the United States Trade Representative website (screen shot taken at 10:00am EST on 6 April, 2025, with highlights added by us):

Side note: As you can see, they've chosen parameters that neutralise ε and φ (because 4 times 0.25 = 1), so the tariff formula is reduced to:

where xi = total imports from country i and mi = total exports to country i.

Potential economic flaws with this formula aside, the formula as it's written would imply tariffs should come down, not go up, for most of the US's main trading partners.

How is this so? Take these examples, with import and export figures for the US's top trading partners from the WTO. As you can see, the formula has a negative result for the EU, China, Japan, Korea, etc.:

Notice the signs in the last column. With the exception of the UK, the calculations for the other countries result in negative numbers. If Δti is negative, this means a change to the downside, or lower tariffs. According to this official formula, these countries would all see a decrease in the tariff applied by the US. Not an increase.

If the formula had been written the other way around (i.e. "Δti=(mi-xi)/mi" not "Δti=(xi-mi)/mi"), then the calculation would imply tariffs rise because the change (Δti) would be a positive number.

For example, switching the formula around would mean a positive change to tariffs (as in, rising tariffs):

So, in our opinion, the official formula displayed on the government website is written the wrong way around.

We'll leave discussion of the validity of the underlying formula (that is, basing a tariff formula on trade flows) to the trade and economic experts.