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Q&A: Cascale’s Colin Browne on Trump Tariffs, Supply Chain Upheaval and the ‘Unreasonable Man’
Jasmin Malik Chua
10 min read
It was only a few weeks ago at Sourcing Journal’s sustainability summit in New York City that we asked Cascale, the multi-stakeholder organization formerly known as the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, where the industry goes from here. As the world continues to reel from President Donald Trump’s blunt-force tariffs on imports from overseas, the question needs to be reframed and re-asked. So what happens now? In this lightly edited interview, we checked in with Colin Browne, CEO of Cascale and a former Under Armour veteran, to gauge the industry’s response to what will likely be a fervid redrawing of supply chain routes and understand why businesses cannot afford to forget the individuals whose lives are going to be upended as a result.
SJ: Were you watching the live feed of the tariff announcements on Wednesday? What was your immediate reaction when he started reading out those numbers?
ColinBrowne: Yeah, I was. It was intriguing. I had expected that there were going to be some big numbers, but I was kind of taken aback by just how aggressive some of those numbers were. And it was just going through my mind how much of the Southeast Asian supply chain that we rely on was being targeted. And it started going through my mind that the poor folks that are running global supply chains within our industry are clearly going to have to earn their salary over the next few months to try and figure out how to best manage through this.
Then there are the implications for the individuals who are involved in the supply chains. It’s easier for us to focus on the financial side of it, but the issue that we’re missing is that people’s lives are involved as well. And the global supply chain we’ve built over the past 40, 50 years has been about comparative advantage, of having to move products to best optimize the model. And there’s an awful lot of people in a lot of developing countries that our industry has helped move forward on their economic development path.
SJ: Some 98 percent of apparel sold in the U.S. is made overseas. What is the implication of this announcement, both for American and global markets?
C.B.: I think it’s going to put a huge amount of pressure on consumers. And I’m not going to get into the economics of it, but, by default, many brands, many retailers, certainly as they’re thinking about the business, it has a pretty significant effect if you think about how they are going to have to deliver on their financial performance.
We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that will impact the bottom lines of many brands, and they will have to decide whether they’re, in fact, going to raise prices or whether they’re going to eat those increases and reduce their numbers. Both of those answers aren’t great because they’re going to impact consumers one way or another, either in their 401(k)s, because that’s what they’ve got invested in the market, or in their consumption because prices are going to go up. So, I think this could potentially be quite damaging in the long term.
Longer term, who’s to say? I hope there’s a long-term plan behind this, but the probability of us being able to move manufacturing back to the U.S. is incredibly challenging. The amount of people involved, the raw materials that we use, the technology and the lack of automation in our industry make it incredibly difficult to think about realistically moving manufacturing back to the U.S. in any meaningful way.
SJ: I want to return to what you said about the livelihoods that are wrapped up in the supply chain. We’re all thinking of the economic effects these tariffs will have, including what they mean for our own wallets. But is there a larger human impact that hasn’t quite registered yet, particularly in the poorer parts of the global South?
C.B.: One of the things that our industry has often been castigated for is moving product from country to country. But I think one of the things this has done is it has helped emerging economies move forward on their economic development journey. I started my career in Korea in 1989, when a lot of the footwear manufacturing was in Korea. Look at Korea now; it’s moved on dramatically since those days. So I think it’s often the first step.
By default, a lot of the individuals that are working in our industry tend to be in developing societies and developing communities. Obviously, changes in the way that orders flow, including the potential reduction of orders, will have a much bigger impact on those individuals because they’re living much closer to a subsistence level than perhaps us in the West and other parts of the world. We have to bear in mind, as we’re making difficult decisions about how to mitigate this, that we live and work in an ecosystem and that there are broader implications than just the financial.
SJ: You’ve opened a new Better Buying ratings cycle for suppliers, your first since the platform’s acquisition. Any guesses on what you might hear during what is certainly a very challenging time for them? How are you going to drive the “collective action” you often talk about?
C.B.: I do not doubt we will hear quite a lot of noise. I suspect that as this impact starts to flow through to the factories and to the individuals that are manufacturing our goods, they are going to be impacted.
I think there are a lot of industry associations that are working together on lobbying and the more political angle of how do you potentially address the challenges around this? And we don’t get involved in that. What we spend our time doing is helping members think through the decisions that they are going to make concerning future sourcing strategies in the context of sustainability and social justice.
SJ: I think there’s concern about purchasing practices, right? I was speaking to suppliers from Bangladesh yesterday, and they were saying that even though they’re not the ones paying the tariffs, they’re concerned about pricing squeezes from their buyers because of them.
C.B.: Brands are also looking to protect their own revenue and protect their own stakeholders within their business. And so they are going to look to do whatever they can to mitigate those price increases. The cost of goods and what they buy is probably 40 percent—or thereabouts—of their revenue. But even if it’s 30 percent of the revenue, seeing a 20 percent or 40 percent increase in costs has a huge knock-on effect on their revenue. So, undoubtedly, they are going to be looking to manage their pricing as effectively as they possibly can, and they will pull all the levers that they potentially can.
But again, we just have to bear in mind that we will only work through this if we work with partnership, and in some respects, similar to the challenges that we went through with Covid, when all of a sudden, demand kind of dried up, and the brands that handled the relationship with the manufacturers responsibly have been able to continue to build sustainable, ongoing businesses.
And so I would just ask brands to be responsible in those relationships that they have and not put undue and unreasonable pressure on their partners. We will get through this if we work in partnership. We won’t get through this if we pursue this just for our self-interest.
SJ: The United States aside, the EU is also facing a pivotal moment in its enforcement of sustainability rules, such as agreeing to delay corporate sustainability reporting by two years and member state transposition and first-time application of the corporate sustainability due diligence directive by a year. So we’re seeing things shift to 2027, 2028. We could still see substantial watering down of requirements as a result of the omnibus proposal. Is this good or bad news for our industry?
C.B.: I don’t think it’s at all good for our industry. I’m all for simplification of the rules. I think overly complex rules are going to be difficult to enforce, so I accept the fact that there may be a need to simplify the rules.
But I also think that backing off from the level of commitment is a mistake. I think abdicating responsibility for climate change is a mistake, and I implore the European Union to continue to take a leadership role in this because I think this is something where Europe can lead. It’s an area where Europe has worked through the mechanics of what this actually means and how they can continue to invest in this important area. And I implore them not to lose faith. We need them to take the lead.
SJ: Is there a way to make sure lawmakers are also listening to the industry’s concerns about weakening sustainability rules?
C.B.: I was in Europe a couple of weeks ago and I specifically delayed my return so I could talk at an industry event there to try and continue to ensure that lawmakers hear the fact that we, as a large part of the industry, continue to be concerned about it and that we’re supportive of trying to work in partnership with them, because this will only get resolved if businesses and legislators work in partnership.
And I know a lot of people in the industry are talking to legislators with regards to how we find a way through this? How do we get to what is the right solution for the industry, society and, more broadly, for the planet?
SJ: I know that different parts of the industry don’t agree. Some businesses consider these requirements a heavy burden. Others say they’re necessary to level the playing field and make sure everyone operates by the same rules.
C.B.: I come back to the George Bernard Shaw quote, which is, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.” All progress depends upon unreasonable men. And you have to be a little unreasonable; you have to raise the bar. You have to hold the industry and all of ourselves to a higher standard. Otherwise, the alternative is we sink to the level of our compromise; we don’t rise to the level of our ambitions.
For me, part of this is how do we at least ensure that we are trying to move forward to the level of our ambitions and not just allow it to fall to a level of compromise?
Businesses have to make the right decisions for their own well-being and for the right future for their own stakeholders. But a lot of those major constituents are the individuals who are working in the facilities, who are manufacturing the goods. We mustn’t forget the individuals at the level of society where they’re often impacted far greater than many others, and we just have to keep that front and center as we go through what is really going to be a difficult time. But we can get through it as long as we work with partnership, and as long as we work with respect and appreciation of what everyone is dealing with.
