Pollsters Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now have run a poll across Britain on perceptions about tariffs and attitudes towards trade policy in the UK. Fieldwork was conducted from 3–5 February 2025, with a sample size of 2,027.

1. Do you believe that international trade is generally good or bad for the UK?

• Very good: 33%
• Good: 33%
• Neither good nor bad: 10%
• Bad: 3%
• Very bad: 1%
• Don’t know: 20%

2. Read the following sentence about trade in England: ‘All merchants shall be able to go out of and come into England safely […] for buying and selling by the ancient and right customs free from all evil tolls’. From which of the following do you think this sentence comes from?

• Magna Carta (1215): 22%
• Queen Elizabeth’s speech ahead of the Spanish Armada (1588): 7%
• The English Bill of Rights (1689): 20%
• Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech (1946): 4%
• Don’t know: 48%

3. Which of these do you think is the best definition of the word ‘tariff’ when used about trade?

• A tax imposed by a country on goods imported from abroad: 62%
• A limit on the total amount of certain goods that can be imported each year: 4%
• A trade agreement between two or more countries to reduce import taxes: 5%
• A law that bans the import of certain categories of goods from a specific country: 1%
• Don’t know: 28%

4. Tariffs (import taxes) raise tax revenue but make imported goods dearer to buy. Thinking about the level of tariffs that Britain charges on goods imported from other countries, which statement comes closest to your own view?

• Britain should have low or no tariffs on the goods we import: 23%
• Britain should have moderate tariffs on the goods we import: 37%
• Britain should have high tariffs on the goods we import: 3%
• Don’t know: 37%

5. US president Donald Trump has recently introduced tariffs (import taxes) on US imports from Canada, Mexico, and China. He is also considering introducing them on US imports from the EU and Britain. If the US introduces tariffs on imports from Britain, how do you believe that Britain should react?

• We should increase our tariffs on imports from the US: 24%
• We should lower tariffs on imports from all countries, including the US: 6%
• We shouldn’t change our tariffs on imports from the US: 18%
• The UK should rejoin the EU and let our tariffs be decided in Brussels: 17%
• Don’t know: 36%

Full data tables are available here