Although the Trump administration’s 90-day rollback of tariffs on Chinese imports has given retailers some breathing room to bring more product into the U.S., retailers remain largely in the dark over how to react once the Aug. 14 deadline looms.
Due to the tariff truce, duties on most goods from China are now at 30 percent, well below the 145 percent total the tariffs escalated to ahead of the détente.
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“We still need clarity from the administration on what happens post-Aug. 14,” said Jonathan Gold, vice president of supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation (NRF). “I don’t think they’ve figured it out yet, to be honest.”
In a webinar hosted by freight booking platform Freightos Monday morning, Gold noted that the question remains whether the tariffs will increase again to 145 percent if a deal is not made—which he believes is not likely. But he didn’t rule out the possibility of an 80 percent or 100 percent tariff based on President Donald Trump’s prior communications on Truth Social, as well as numbers initially touted during his election campaign.
The China deadline isn’t the only one on U.S. retailers’ minds, with the original 90-day pause of country-specific reciprocal tariffs ending on July 9.
“Right now, you’re going to see more front-loading as folks are trying to rush between those two different expiration dates. The front-loading we’ve seen to date does not include the holiday merchandise for later in the year, because the order is typically placed now or last month, and that doesn’t start coming in until late summer,” Gold said.
Gold predicts a “ramp up” in the next few months by retailers looking to get holiday merchandise into the U.S., further pulling forward the traditional August-to-October peak shipping season.
“A lot of retailers are going to try and beat that Aug. 14 date from China not knowing what’s going to happen,” Gold said. “Retailers don’t want to get caught with product, and then the tariff goes back up to 80 or 100 percent, or higher.”
During the webinar, Gold observed the similarities within the current environment on the trans-Pacific trade lane as that of during the Covid-19 pandemic. The decline in capacity due to blank sailings and vessel swaps from when carriers adapted lower demand had already begun to reverse once the 90-day rollback was initiated.