The United States has announced it will impose higher tariffs on EU dairy products, in turn affecting UK exports.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) have announced that the US would be allowed to apply up to $7.5bn of retaliatory tariffs a year on products imported from the bloc.
This is as a result of the Airbus-Boeing dispute. Both the US and EU claim that each others aeroplane manufacturer is unfairly subsidised.
As such, President Trump's administration has published a final list of EU products affected by the additional duties, which will be implemented from the 18 October.
The final list of EU products includes a selection of yogurt, butter and cheese trade codes, although the largest impact will be on cheese.
The cheese codes cover a range of speciality European cheeses, including Cheddar.
The additional duties have been set at 25% ad valorum i.e 25% of the value of that particular product.
The tariffs applied, however, vary between EU member states, levy-board AHDB Dairy says.
It adds that in terms of affected products, UK dairy exports will be subject to all the retaliatory tariffs.
Tariffs will be applied to both yogurt and whey products. However, the UK has historically not exported these products to the US in any substantial volumes.
Cheese exports are likely to be the most impacted by the implementation of the tariffs.
Last year, the UK exported around 7,700 tonnes of cheese to the US, around 4% of the UK’s total cheese exports.
Almost all of this is product that would be hit by the tariffs.
Meanwhile, all of the UK’s butter exports to the US will be impacted by the tariffs.
However, the US only accounted for less than 1% of UK butter exports last year, so the overall impact is likely to be fairly limited, AHDB Dairy says.
