Rebecca Day

Imports at major U.S. container ports are expected by year-end to hit their lowest level in almost two years, said a Friday report from the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates. NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said despite the lower volumes, retailers are still experiencing challenges along the supply chain, calling out U.S. ports and intermodal rail yards.

It takes a lot for companies to move supply chains, said John Murphy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president-international policy, on a Flexport webinar July 14. National security concerns about such items as 5G could spur such action, Murphy said, but strong government action requiring companies to move supply chains would be limited to “a few select sectors.”

The announcement of a phase one U.S.-China trade deal that included halving List 4A tariffs in place since Sept. 1 could do little to change damage done to small audio companies smacked by the previous three tranches of tariffs still in place, they said. Executives said in interviews this month have been hit hard by the duties with little hope other than to wait them out.

Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports have had a diverse impact on electronics companies serving the custom installer industry, according to manufacturers at the ProSource Summit Expo in Nashville on March 3. Origin Acoustics has seen a wide variety of impacts within its product line, CEO Nick Berry told Consumer Electronics Daily, a sister publication to International Trade Today. Passive speakers, which lack a built-in power source, have been relatively immune, but the effect on amplifiers has been “extreme,” he said. Tariffs on a container of electronics that Origin imported from China in December cost the company more than all the tariffs it paid the prior year, he said. The hike in the duty rate to 10 percent from 1 percent -- “an extreme scenario” -- was going to be a “clear negative” to the balance sheet, so the company, entering its fifth year in business, implemented its first-ever price increase for 2019, he said.

DALLAS -- Audio companies are bracing for the impact of the 10 percent Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports that took effect a month ago, and are holding out hope that the Jan. 1 increase to 25 percent won't come to pass, vendors said at the fall meeting of the Home Technology Specialists of America. JL Audio, which sells subwoofers for the home market and speakers, subs and amplifiers for the marine and automotive spaces, is raising prices 6 percent on Nov. 15 on its home product line, said Doug Henderson, senior vice president-home audio.

BOSTON -- The effects of the 10 percent Section 301 tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, which the Trump administration imposed last month (see 1809240015), aren’t likely to be felt at retail this holiday season, Consumer Technology Association President Gary Shapiro said Oct. 15 at the association's Innovate Celebrate conference. Shapiro’s bigger concern is what happens after Jan. 1 when the tariffs are scheduled to rise to 25 percent. Jan. 1 is a “very critical date because 10 percent is a lot different than 25 percent, Shapiro” said. “Ten percent hurts; 25 percent makes companies reel. The pain throughout the industry is real -- and soon to the consumer and retail is real.”

SHANGHAI -- Consumer Technology Association President Gary Shapiro walked a line between hope and disappointment at the CES Asia trade show June 8 on the Trump administration’s trade policies, during Q&A in a media briefing. In response to a question on what he would like to see from the Trump administration on trade, Shapiro said, “We were very disappointed that he pulled out of the Trans-Pacific agreement,” saying the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a “zero-tariff deal among 20 countries.” The administration’s trade stance is “not as terrible as some of us had feared, but it’s not as good as it could be still -- especially with the importance of trade to our future,” Shapiro said.

The TV and display global supply chain is facing its “greatest political challenge with the presidency of Donald Trump,” a Display Supply Chain Consultants blog post said (here), predicting an uptick in “assembled in the USA” products. Calls for import tariffs on goods from Mexico and as much as a 45 percent import tax on goods from China “would profoundly disrupt the industry," DSCC President Bob O’Brien said. Some 95 percent of TV imports into the U.S. come from those two countries, he said.