NEWS
4 ASIAN TRADER 16 MAY 2025
Cash Access UK, the organisa-
tion set up to protect access to
cash across the nation, has
partnered with Co-op to open
the first banking hub within a
supermarket setting.
The hub – in Co-op’s
Treorchy c-store in South
Wales – will provide local
residents and businesses with
access to essential banking
services alongside their
shopping.
While more banking
customers are choosing to
bank and pay for things
digitally, there are still many
customers and businesses that
require regular access to cash
and face-to-face banking
services. As a result, the
banking industry in 2022 to
begin the rollout of banking
hubs to help maintain these
services on high streets. 150
hubs are open across the
country.
“We’re thrilled to partner
with Co-op to establish our
Treorchy banking hub
permanently within their
local store,” Gareth Oakley,
CEO at Cash Access UK, said.
The move forms part of Co-op’s
focus on creating added
services in its stores and, to
promote stronger and more
resilient communities.”
Co-op to house UK’s first
supermarket banking hub
Absolutely Tarifed
ithin the next few weeks, whatever size of
tsunami has been unleashed by Trump’s tarif
trade wars will make landfall in the USA, in the
form of massive price hikes on imported goods from every-
where, but especially from China. The consequences are
already in action and rolling towards the shores of America, as
container deliveries into ports have already shrunk 35%,
meaning many empty shelves and angry laid-of truckers very
soon.
It is not the end of the world. US ports receive only about
25% of their cargoes from China, and some goods will still
arrive – although the parts and consumables needed by small
businesses across the USA face disaster because of raised
prices or simply halted supplies. And for American consumers,
there will probably be a nasty inflation shock.
What it really means is the end of the world as we know it.
Globalism is efectively over, at least as far as the USA is
concerned. Even if tarifs are amended, as inevitably they will
be, the trust has been broken, and assumptions fatally
undermined.
For the rest of the world, it is very interesting. As mercan-
tilist China desperately attempts to unload its now-surplus
production elsewhere, a flood of cheap goods is destined to
land on everybody else’s shelves.
This week, however, the UK government said it is going to
ensure this does not happen, and will end the “de minimis”
import duty level – meaning that goods under a certain value
(namely cheap online orders shipped from China, and maybe
via somewhere else to circumvent Chinese re-routing) will
become more expensive.
This is an attempt to save what is left of our manufacturing
industry, which cannot compete on price with dumped
Chinese goods, but also to stave of the deflationary efect of
such dumping. World trade will begin now to re-route itself
around the USA’s tarif walls, and it presents a fantastic
opportunity for very many countries to rediscover the
benefits of real free-trade and mop up the extra benefits of
doing business internationally that America has spurned.
For grocery, and the local store, the mid-term efects are
hard to predict and perhaps cannot be predicted. Much of
what is sold in convenience is locally produced (UK or EU and
so on), so the sector will not sufer from any immediate
efects of US tarifs, although knock-on efects (of countries
not exporting to America) might mean more availability and
lower prices here, and therefore more sales but at lower
margins.
Longer-term, there is reason to be optimistic. World trade
certainly needed shaking up – tarifs and restrictions accrete
like cholesterol in the veins and arteries of trade. Lowering
them (if only to please the USA) will improve circulation, so to
speak. And China, which has grown its economy by hollowing
out those of other countries with its cheap subsidised
products and almost slave labour (10 hours a day, 6 days a week
if you are lucky enough to have an ofce job), certainly needed
reining in. For that, the USA deserves some gratitude.
The government has
launched a consultation
on plans to significantly
strengthen the Soft
Drinks Industry Levy
(SDIL), proposing to
lower the sugar thresh-
old and remove exemp-
tions for milk-based
drinks.
HM Revenue &
Customs and Treasury are
seeking industry views on three
key proposals to expand the scope
of the sugar tax, which was first
introduced in 2018. The consulta-
tion will run until 21 July 2025.
Under the proposals, the
minimum content at which the
levy applies would be reduced
from 5g to 4g per 100ml (a 20%
cut in permissible sugars), while
exemptions for milk-based
drinks and certain milk substi-
tute products would be removed.
In their joint foreword to the
consultation document, James
Murray, exchequer secretary to
the treasury, and Ashley Dalton,
public health and prevention
minister, defended the proposed
changes, citing the continued
high rates of obesity in the UK.
“Our nation faces the
formidable challenge of persis-
tently high rates of obesity and
overweight, afecting nearly
two-thirds of adults and a third of
children. This epidemic costs the
health service an estimated £19
billion a year and the economy an
estimated £15 billion annually,”
they wrote.
Taking a diametrically
opposite view, the Institute of
Economic Afairs (IEA), called for
the levy to be scrapped entirely.
“It should be repealed, not
expanded,” Dr Christopher Snow-
don, Head of Lifestyle Economics
at the IEA, said. “It has been
costing consumers £300 million
a year while childhood obesity
rates have continued to rise.
The final policy will be
confirmed in the Autumn
Budget.
Desperate for cash again, politicians cite health concerns
Government proposes major
expansion of sugar tax