Your commercial news round-up: UK inflation, X, Nvidia, trade war

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The business world is buzzing with activity at the moment and keeping up can be challenging. LawCareers.Net has compiled a round-up of the latest commercial news you should know about. In the UK, inflation rates have fallen and X has seen a significant drop in revenues and profits since Elon Musk's takeover of the social media platform. Meanwhile, we continue to see the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on chip manufacturing company Nvidia and China has unexpectedly appointed a new trade envoy.

• UK inflation fell to 2.6% in March, below City forecasts of 2.7%, increasing pressure on the Bank of England to cut interest rates next month. The drop was driven by falling fuel prices and slower increases in the cost of a night out, according to the Office for National Statistics. However, this was offset by rising prices for clothing and footwear. Meanwhile, the average petrol price fell by 1.6p between February to March 2025 to 137.5p, which is a drop from 144.8p a litre in March 2024. US President Donald Trump's tariff wars have triggered uncertainty, potentially dampening growth and affecting inflation forecasts. The deputy chief economist at the consultancy Capital Economics, Ruth Gregory, predicted that inflation could hit 3% in April due to rising utility and water bills, with a potential peak of 3.5% this year.
   
• Social media platform X’s UK revenues and profits have collapsed in the year following Elon Musk's takeover. X’s total year-on-year revenue fell by 66.3%, from £205.3 million in 2022 to £69.1 million in 2023, while profits dropped from £5.6 million to £1.2 million. The “significant decrease in the performance” was attributed to a decline in advertising spending following concerns about “brand safety and/or content moderation”. X commented: “The business continues to take corrective measures to build brand safety tools, invest in platform safety and content moderation and then educate advertisers about these initiatives.” Musk's takeover of the platform, formerly known as Twitter, also resulted in significant layoffs, reducing the workforce in 2023 from 8,000 to 1,500 globally, and from 399 to 114 in the UK. Despite these challenges, X's value has rebounded to $44 billion this year. Digital advertising expert Farhad Divecha said: “[…] I think we’ve seen the worst and X might finally have the chance to recover advertiser revenues, but that’s only going to happen in UK and Europe if Musk and his crew pull their act together, provide support for advertisers and put in place some brand safety guardrails.”
   
• Chip manufacturing giant Nvidia anticipates a £4.1 billion hit following new US export rules that require licenses for its H20 AI chip sales to China. The US government told the company that it has imposed the license requirement to prevent the “the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a supercomputer in China”. This comes amid escalating US-China trade tensions. The company’s revenue from China, including Hong Kong, will be significantly impacted, and its shares have already plunged almost 6% in after-hours trading in the US. Nvidia's revenue hit aligned with estimates from experts like Marc Einstein from the Counterpoint Research consultancy. Einstein said: "While this is certainly a lot of money, this is something Nvidia can bear. But as we have seen in the last few days and weeks, this may largely be a negotiating tactic. I wouldn't be surprised to see some exemptions or changes made to tariff policy in the near future, given this not only impacts Nvidia but the entire US semiconductor ecosystem.”
   
• China has unexpectedly appointed Li Chenggang as its new trade envoy amid escalating trade tensions with the US. Chenggang, a former assistant commerce minister and World Trade Organization ambassador, has replaced vice commerce minister Wang Shouwen. This change comes as Beijing faces the impact of Trump’s tariffs, which China’s officials referred to as a practice of "tariff barriers and trade bullying". The escalating trade war – ignited by the spike in US tariffs on Chinese exports from 10% to 145% – is expected to significantly impact China’s economy. While China's GDP growth of 5.4% between January and March exceeded expectations, the figure reflected the period before the tariff hike. A senior adviser to the Conference Board's China Center, Alfredo Montufar-Helu, said the change in leadership is "very abrupt and potentially disruptive", given how quickly trade tensions had escalated. Montufar-Helu added: "We can only speculate as to why this happened at this precise moment; but it might be that in the view of China's top leadership, given how tensions have continued escalating, they need someone else to break the impasse in which both countries find themselves and finally start negotiating.”

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