Gavin Grey: UK correspondent on the rules around electric cars getting relaxed following Trump tariffs

The UK Government is stepping in to make things a little easier for car manufactures following Trump's latest tariff update.

A ban on producing new petrol and diesel cars is set to come into effect in 2030 - but Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander confirmed regulations would be relaxed ahead of the deadline.

UK correspondent Gavin Grey says Donald Trump's 25 percent levy on cars imported to the US will likely have a negative impact - but Prime Minister Starmer will try to make a deal with Trump on trade.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brian Bridge over in the UK, the Brits have wanted
by twenty thirty to stop selling petrol and diesel cars.
They bend it in fact, but Kis Starmer has done
a speech it could all change. Gavin Gray Are UK correspondent,
Gavin good evening.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hither Ryan, Yeah, it's going to be an interesting one.
Where do you to hear from him? Shortly? This is
all about trying to help the car manufacturing industry here
in the UK survive those tariffs that America imposed. America
are a very very big market for the UK car industry.
So what we believe Kis Starmer will do is while
keeping that general twenty thirty ban on the sale of

(00:36):
cars powdered by petrol and diesel, keeping that in place,
these targets for every year until twenty thirty saying how
many electric vehicles must be sold by each manufacturer before
they get fined, those are likely to be relaxed. So
currently we have a system where each manufacturer is told
you have to sell this many electric vehicles. If you

(00:57):
don't sell this many then you basically get fine, and
that's led to some of them having to almost stop
the sales of petrol and diesel cars that they might
have sold in order to push and promote the electric vehicles.
We believe sekire Starm is going to change that. We
also think that he's going to look at trying to
put safeguards on the steel industry here. And the big

(01:21):
theory is that we will become, along with other nations,
are dumping ground for steel, cheaper steel, particularly from China
that will no longer get into America. So we're expecting
the announcement of some kind of safeguard for there, and
we also think they're going to bring forward investment announcements
now in order to try and get the country growing
using the steel that we've got and trying to keep

(01:42):
people in work. We also are waiting to hear We
understand that the apparently the government believes a deal, a
trade deal with India is now not far away, with
the pressure particularly on India as well hit by a
twenty six percent tariff by the US, and we believe
that deal could well be announced over the coming weeks,
but pressure to get that deal done and get it

(02:03):
done quickly.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
All right, what about these two UK in peace, what's
the story with them? The trying it into the occupied
wisp Bend going through Israel and denied intry to Israel.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, that's right. So Abtizam Mohammad and yuang Yan both
were on a trip to the occupied West Bank. They
said they wanted a witness first hand the situation and
were stopped at the airport. Now Israel said that, you know,
we believe these two were effectively going to create speech
that would have caused a great deal of concern and

(02:35):
might have been of significant security concerns to their country.
And both have made speeches in parliament criticizing the situation
in Gaza and heavily criticizing Israel. But the idea that
two existing members of parliament are deemed good enough for
parliament but not deemed good enough to enter Israel has caused,

(02:56):
as you can imagine, quite a bit of shock. They
said they were in shock, and the Foreign Secretary says
that it's been really poor judgment by the Israelis to
do this and very concerning. But interestingly, the leader of
the Conservative parties have said, well, Israel's got every right
to defend there and control their own borders. And the
fact that we've got a couple of labor MPs who

(03:18):
can't even get into a certain country is really really worrying.
Now people have roundly condemned her, saying she should be
supporting free speech, she should be supporting this pair either way,
a bit of a muddle run.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
You've got a new tunnel under the River Thames too,
haven't you.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, expensive though, so these new tunnels pretty few and
far between. This one called the Blackwall Tunnel set in
East London meant to really ease congestion over the very
very significantly busy roads that affect it and the Blackwall
Tunnel nearby. And so this new one called the Silvertown
Tunnel is going to link East London to Southeast London.

(03:58):
It comes though, at a cost of almost five billion
New Zealand dollars. How are we going to pay for that? Well,
it's done by private finance, meaning everyone that uses it
is going to have to pay a toll. Interestingly, the
toll varies according to the time of day and the
day you want to use it. They've decided this new

(04:21):
sort of system of pricing is the way forward, called
dynamic pricing here, and they say it will significantly reduce
journey times, taking some twenty minutes off that journey through
the old tunnel. But environmental it's not happy, saying it's
encouraging people to use the car and not bicycle or
any other mode of transport.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
All right, Gevin, thanks for that. To appreciate your time.
Gevin Graying, a UK correspondent.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
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