Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Global Trade Turbulence: Exploring Policy, Pricing, & Survival for Small Businesses with Cindy Allen
Transcript
- 0:05These tariffs are harsh and they are very impactful to, especially to small and medium sized businesses.
- 0:13And it seems like a very, you know, hammerish type of, type of action to take on something that's happened gradually over the past 25 years.
- 0:23Today we sit down with Cindy Allen, a veteran in international trade with over 30, 35 years of experience helping importers, exporters and shippers navigate the complex world of global policy and supply chains.
- 0:39Cindy has seen the industry transform from its early days, guiding businesses of all sizes through everything from shifting tariffs to major geopolitical changes.
- 0:49In this episode, Cindy offers a candid frontline look at the real world impact of recent tariffs, why supply chains are in flux, how small businesses can adapt, and what all these international trade deals mean for the future of
- 1:05American manufacturing.
- 1:06She'll explain her perspective on who pays tariffs, what businesses can do to protect themselves, and why the promise of bringing massive manufacturing back to the US Is more complicated than we've been led to believe.
- 1:20If you're in logistics, international trade, or simply want to know what's around the corner for the global economy, you won't want to miss Cindy's expert insights and, and practical advice.
- 1:31As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
- 1:36All right, Cindy Allen, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
- 1:40Thank you.
- 1:41Thanks, Dave.
- 1:42Thanks for having me.
- 1:43Absolutely.
- 1:44We appreciate you taking the time to be here.
- 1:47So Cindy, for those who may not know you and your work, you are an international trade consultant with, with 35 years of industry experience and you currently help importers, exporters, shippers, anyone involved in international trade understand what's going
- 2:06on from a policy perspective and help them navigate through that whole maze, if you will.
- 2:13And, and lately, as we all know, it's been more complex than ever with the, with the tariffs and everything changing and the situation being so fluid.
- 2:24So we wanted to have you on to just have a, an open and honest discussion about what's going on, what small businesses can expect and where, where you see things going.
- 2:35So that's why we're here.
- 2:36Thanks.
- 2:38Exciting topics, exciting times right now.
- 2:40Yes.
- 2:41Yes.
- 2:42So let's just, let's just get right into it with some of the, some of the major deals that are on the table and kind of where, where you see things going.
- 2:54Well, let's start too with China.
- 2:56Right?
- 2:56China is, you know, we're, I'm in the logistics industry.
- 3:01Many of our listeners are, I mean China is certainly probably the biggest country that is a deal is going to have ramifications on and we, we've seen that play out.
- 3:14And at this point as we record this on July 29th, we're still not official as far as where things are going to end up.
- 3:21But how do you see the China situation right now?
- 3:25Well, I, I see it as very complex.
- 3:28It used to be when I started in the business, you know, 30 some years ago actually in Detroit, you know, it was, China was not the largest trading partner, Canada and followed by Mexico and, and then distantly, you
- 3:42know, China there was, Japan and Germany were all big players at.
- 3:47Over the last 35 years, China has become a bigger and bigger market.
- 3:52You know, the United States has become a bigger market for, for Chinese producers, I should say.
- 3:57And with that came a lot of pressure from within China.
- 4:03They had a specific growth plan called 2025 and the, the belts and roads project in 20 within China aim to really increase production in China.
- 4:18So they have had a very tight plan that they followed for the past 25 years to get to where they are today.
- 4:26And it seems like the US kind of ignored that.
- 4:30They ignored how successful China was becoming for a long time.
- 4:34And I think that has played into some of the political conversations that we have today where there's a recognition that China has too much power on a global basis, they have too much of the US market and how
- 4:48do we best address that?
- 4:50And I think one way that the administration is doing that is to assess tariffs along with all the other countries that tariffs are being assessed on.
- 4:59But in my mind, you know, it took 25, 30 years for us to get here.
- 5:04These tariffs are harsh and they are very impactful to, especially to small and medium sized businesses.
- 5:12And it seems like a very hammerish type of, type of action to take on something that's happened gradually over the past 25 years.
- 5:23Yeah, and, and that's a good point too because.
- 5:26Right.
- 5:27Clearly that there's been an adversarial relationship with China and we, you know, all, all the different things that have played out in the GEOP geopolitical realm and it didn't happen overnight.
- 5:39And I, I'm sure every, every American would agree with wanting to, you know, ensure that the power balance didn't get out of control and you know, and want to, you know, see America remain with, with dominant on a
- 5:58global scale and not have a threat from China per se.
- 6:01But the complicated issue becomes like you mentioned, when so many American businesses are so dependent on the Chinese supply chain.
- 6:11It's like how, how do you balance that where you want to, you want to keep China in check and you want to restore some of the balance and, and get a more balanced situation.
- 6:23But in the process, it looks like it's affecting these American companies that are so heavily dependent on that supply chain.
- 6:31Yeah.
- 6:31And I think that one of the, the challenges that we have in the trade as trade administrator, you know, trade trade professionals, is that people don't understand what we do.
- 6:42You know, it's kind of this little esoteric field.
- 6:45I remember when 911 happened and they had all of the security on the news and all the containers and talking about all the additional information that customs wanted for goods coming into the United States.
- 6:59I remember my mom calling me and saying, I think I understand what you do now.
- 7:03You help people put stuff in those containers.
- 7:06And I'm like, yes, but, you know, although our customs brokers freight forwarder supply chain has become more of a topic in mainstream media and more of a topic, you know, around dinner tables, people don't understand the ins and
- 7:22outs of it.
- 7:22And the notion that other countries are paying the tariffs are really still prevalent among most of the population.
- 7:32And I think that when you look at, does the administration have the support of the American public in assessing tariffs against China, against, you know, Vietnam, Mexico, Canada, most of the people think, yeah, we don't want their goods
- 7:47in here for free, we should take some action.
- 7:51But they don't understand what that action actually means in the form of tariffs.
- 7:56U.S.
- 7:57importers pay those tariffs.
- 7:59The foreign governments are not paying those tariffs.
- 8:02And any investment that companies or foreign countries make are going to be through private country companies.
- 8:11So if another country, through a trade agreement agrees to make an investment in the United States, it's not going to be that country making the investment.
- 8:19It's going to be enabling companies that are domiciled in those countries to make investments in the United States.
- 8:27And that really does seem to be opposite of what we're trying to accomplish here.
- 8:32And what has happened is we're gradually seeing price pressures come into the American market.
- 8:40So at the beginning of the first Trump administration, when the 301 tariffs came in, you know, they're 25%, some up to 100%, some as low as 7.5%.
- 8:51A lot of the companies looked at those and thought, okay, we can weather this storm for the next two, three years.
- 8:57And there was this expectation that the Biden administration was going to do away with those tariffs.
- 9:03And when they didn't do away with those tariffs, then we saw some price increases because those companies had actually absorbed the cost of those additional tariffs or they'd spread it out to their Suppliers and the price increase on
- 9:16the actual products was very minimal.
- 9:18And that's where we started seeing some price increases in the Biden administration.
- 9:25Some prices go up because those companies made a choice not to continue to incorporate the tariffs into their pricing and it affected the price of goods.
- 9:34So I think we're seeing similar behavior on an expedited timeline here.
- 9:42Companies thought, okay, we need to weather this storm.
- 9:45What is the market going to bear?
- 9:47Can I sell my goods for if I have to pay 145% tariff on Canada or on China, which is what it was the first time, can we weather that storm?
- 9:57And how long can we weather that storm?
- 9:59And we saw a lot of front loading, a lot of major companies who understood what was going to happen once the election results came in.
- 10:08We saw lots and lots of front loading.
- 10:11And with that front loading, then we saw the tariffs go down, then we saw a lot more imports.
- 10:16The traffic has gone like this.
- 10:18Based on how the tariffs are being assessed right now we're seeing a leveling of the.
- 10:25There was another surge when the tariffs went down.
- 10:27And now with the talk of a China trade agreement, we're seeing, you know, kind of a flat line right now.
- 10:34People are taking a wait and see approach into what's going to happen.
- 10:38So I think right now what we're seeing is the quarterly results for a lot of the publicly traded companies.
- 10:47I think when I looked at in the specific healthcare sector, 18 of the companies that announced results last quarter, 14 of them would not issue guidance for the future.
- 10:5910 of them had a profit margin hit of a significant, considered significant profit margin hit that was traced to the tariffs.
- 11:09So what we're seeing is the data is showing us that companies are being hit on the stock market, in the market that are heavily dependent on imports, and then in the pricing.
- 11:22When I looked at the traffic patterns, I said, people are going to start being impacted.
- 11:27You know, July, August time frame.
- 11:29I had originally said June, July, but when the China tariffs went down, I pushed that out to July, August.
- 11:37And I think we're in that timeline now where we're starting to see prices go up.
- 11:42Atlantic Fed also, you know, published a study and they're not the, you know, the Federal Monetary Agency, but they do have great predictive data.
- 11:56And they said that there was a hit to the GDP based on the tariffs of 0.25%, which is a massive amount of impact on GDP.
- 12:04So we're starting to see indications that pricing is going to be impacted and prices are going to go up for consumers.
- 12:11And we're going to start seeing that being tied directly to the tariffs.
- 12:17China specifically, we're hearing Talk of another 90 day pause.
- 12:21They're at the table right now trying to hammer out the next phase of the China US trade deal.
- 12:30They anticipate it's going to take another 90 days.
- 12:32So I think we're going to have another 90 day impact on China right now moving forward.
- 12:39So it's still uncertain, but big impacts.
- 12:46Okay.
- 12:46All right.
- 12:47And just to go back to something you said, are you of the opinion that it's, it's a cut and dry issue that if there are tariffs that raises prices, period?
- 12:59I think, as if I were to make a broad statement, yes, it does raise prices.
- 13:04I think what we've seen in practice has been companies who, who are of size going to their suppliers and saying we need better pricing.
- 13:13They're going to their vendors and saying we need better pricing and then they're raising it, their, their products a small amount.
- 13:21So they're spreading the, the, the impact across all of those companies.
- 13:27So the major companies, you know, the Walmarts of the world, the, the, you know, large companies who have that buying power and pricing power to go to their tiered suppliers are doing that.
- 13:41But what we are seeing is those lower tier suppliers not being able to go any lower.
- 13:46So they're taking a bigger impact on the products that they have.
- 13:50And we're also seeing small to medium sized businesses, you know, which are a lot of, a lot of your listeners, clientele, they are unable to absorb some of these prices.
- 14:02We saw that with the China tariffs, a lot of companies stopped ordering, they stopped shipping, they stopped taking orders, they fulfilled what they could out of current inventories and then when the tariffs went down they started looking at
- 14:13okay, how can we import, can we absorb the pricing?
- 14:17And I think that it's very uncertain for especially smaller companies because they don't have the ability to have to spread that pricing out as much as some of the other larger corporations do.
- 14:29Okay.
- 14:31So one of the things that was floated when all this started was like, look, there's going to be some short term pain, some short term discomfort, but ultimately getting to get to a long term sustainable and better trading
- 14:50relationship and trading balance through, you know, throughout our relationship with all of our global trading partners.
- 14:56I mean, what, what's your thought on that statement?
- 15:01I think it's shortsighted quite frankly because yeah, we're going to see some short term pain, but what is the long term gain?
- 15:09What are we trying to do here?
- 15:10The initial intent of all the tariffs was to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
- 15:15what the data actually shows is that manufacturing has actually slowed in the past six months.
- 15:21Manufacturing capacity has gone down, although we've seen some big splashy announcements about companies making investments in the US that's four to six years off.
- 15:33And you have to question if some of these companies are saying, yeah, we're going to do all the homework, we're going to do all of the, you know, the paperwork, we're going to do all the studies, we're going
- 15:42to get all the permits, and then at the end of this administration, are they, are they going to sink money into these projects and actually have a product being produced into the United States?
- 15:53Because it takes anywhere from three to five years to actually establish a manufacturing facility before it can produce any goods that can be used in the market.
- 16:03So, you know, if that is the intent, we are not achieving that in the short term.
- 16:10Are we going to achieve that in the long term?
- 16:12Will these tariffs actually force companies to establish manufacturing facilities here in the US and the data so far is, is not showing that to be, to be happening.
- 16:27So what is the short term gain?
- 16:29How, or a short term pain, how long does the short term pain lasts before we get to a gain?
- 16:35And then what is that gain?
- 16:36If manufacturing overall is the gain, what does that look like in reality?
- 16:43You know, I'm here in Memphis, Tennessee.
- 16:46We had an announcement a few years ago that Ford was going to invest in a Blue Oval facility, they called it, and it was to manufacture electric vehicles, specifically electric trucks and electric vehicles here in between Memphis and
- 17:02Nashville.
- 17:03And the investment period was seven to 10 years and that was two years ago.
- 17:08They had already done a lot of the assessments and bought the land and did all the acquisitions.
- 17:13So we're looking at, you know, a five, perhaps a five year cycle.
- 17:18They used a lot of the money, grant money locally from the local, the local governments.
- 17:27They used state money grants, but they also used federal grants for the infrastructure plan.
- 17:33And when the grants for the infrastructure plan went away, Ford decided to pause a lot of the investment.
- 17:41They haven't withdrawn the entire project, but they said it's going to take them three to four more years to get to production.
- 17:49And that not only impacts the Ford, but there were also vendors and suppliers, first and second tier suppliers, who were building plants around that Blue Oval facility to support the production line there.
- 18:03So it's impacting those companies as well.
- 18:06So when I look at that, it tells me one, you know, companies don't just invest their own money they look for government assistance, they look for grants.
- 18:15They look for, you know, some partnerships with local, state and federal government to make those types of investments.
- 18:22And we haven't seen the behavior from the federal and most of the states to actually support that kind of manufacturing investment.
- 18:31So.
- 18:31So if a company doesn't have billions and billions of dollars to come in and build a manufacturing plant in the United States, and we don't have a current federal grant programs and federal infrastructure programs to build that, and
- 18:47the states don't have a lot of money because the grants that they were using have been withdrawn.
- 18:52How do we achieve that goal?
- 18:55And I go back to that investment that China made.
- 18:58China made a lot of the investments from the government perspective to support the business that got built.
- 19:04They built the roads, they built all of the infrastructure, they built all of the, you know, the electricity plants.
- 19:09They allowed those companies to have the infrastructure available to actually build the plants.
- 19:16And we don't have that type of program here to support that.
- 19:21So I am concerned that if the gain is manufacturing, that we don't have all of the support systems around that to actually effectively support the development of manufacturing in the U.S.
- 19:37okay, and another.
- 19:40One of the gains that was talked about, and I mean, let's just run through some of these deals because I'd love to get your take on it, was opening up other markets that had been previously closed to US
- 19:52businesses, right, to where there was protectionist policies in place or tariffs that basically made it impractical for goods to be able to be sold there.
- 20:04So the, the big one that was announced just a few days ago was the EU trade deal to where there's going to be a 15 tariff coming in, and then markets are going to be open to the US
- 20:17Companies with, with no tariffs going in that way.
- 20:20And then also a sizable investment from the EU into the US So that, that was another one of the gains that was predicted and talked about.
- 20:30What's your take on, like, that deal specifically and what that would do for US Businesses?
- 20:36I think this is a positive of some of these trade deals is the, the markets being more open than what they were.
- 20:44I do think it's somewhat of a misnomer that markets weren't open to U.S.
- 20:48goods.
- 20:49There are some protectionist areas in every country that they have industries that they want to protect.
- 20:56The US Heavily protects our dairy industry.
- 21:01There are massive amounts of protections on dairy, on cheese, you know, in the form of quotas, in the form of tariffs, in the form of, you know, some outright bans of goods coming into the United States.
- 21:13That's one area that we heavily protect.
- 21:17Traditionally, textiles have been heavily protected with large tariffs in the range of 30% even without all of the additional tariffs.
- 21:26So every country has specific manufacturing and industries that they want to protect.
- 21:33And I think that recognizing that and opening those markets is a good positive step for everyone.
- 21:41It allows US Companies to sell into those countries more economically.
- 21:47But also some of the countries where they're announcing this, you have to understand that there have to be people to buy them.
- 21:54The governments aren't going to buy these goods.
- 21:56It's the people of those countries.
- 21:58And why the EU trade deal?
- 22:00I don't worry about those kinds of things.
- 22:02We're talking about opening market access for some of these smaller countries that are not as affluent as the EU or the US or China.
- 22:11You really wonder what the gain is.
- 22:13Are we really going to gain anything by allowing cars to go into Cambodia or cars to go into Indonesia because the roads do do not support the type of cars that we have and that we produce.
- 22:25So is that really a gain or is that really a political show?
- 22:30So I think that while very positive for a lot of the industries and in the larger countries where there is a middle level market who are going to buy American goods, I kind of look at is the tariff
- 22:46what is actually prohibiting that from being successful in that country or there are other factors.
- 22:55Okay.
- 22:56And then also to like another tool we've seen play out, and it's certainly been talked about a lot, is just that because of the US is the premier consumer economy in the world and everybody wants to sell their
- 23:10goods in, into our country.
- 23:14The use of tariffs as leverage for other political reasons such as, you know, the, the fentanyl trafficking was a big topic of discussion over the past months as, as far as getting other countries to get in line in
- 23:30terms of maybe stopping a hot war type of thing.
- 23:34I mean, what, what's your take on using the tariffs as a negotiation lever to achieve other political goals?
- 23:44I don't think it's fair, quite frankly, because you're, you're messing with the economic market for a political goal.
- 23:51And while, you know, some people support that, I, I think it's short sighted because it hurts the companies that make up the citizenship and in the employees for a political gain.
- 24:02I look at specifically the fentanyl tariffs.
- 24:05The fact that there's a fentanyl tariff on Canada is extremely laughable.
- 24:09There are so few seizures of fentanyl coming in to the US from Canada.
- 24:16It is basically a political tool.
- 24:20CBP's own data shows that the vast majority of fentanyl comes in on the southern border and it comes in in passenger traffic and somewhere in north of 60% come in in US owned, US driven vehicles.
- 24:41So I don't know what putting a tariff on Mexican goods does to stop US Citizens from going into Mexico, loading their car up with fentanyl and bringing it back.
- 24:53I'm not sure what that's going to do.
- 24:55So I, I don't really support the fact that there is a fentanyl tariff because there doesn't seem to be any, a cause and effect for the tariff for that specific item economically.
- 25:08Other.
- 25:08Other uses.
- 25:09Yes, I think it is a political tool that can be used if it's used correctly and effectively to achieve, you know, market access.
- 25:19Yes, let's get market access to achieve other, you know, cooperation to achieve, you know, sanctions have been used forever to stop hostile acts by foreign nation, foreign nations against our allies.
- 25:33You know, I'm very supportive of that but I think there has to be a cause and effect there.
- 25:38You know, the cause of stopping a lot of the military controlled goods going to countries that you know are our enemies, you know, that that's great.
- 25:50You know, the effect is we don't want them to have technology that we have to use against us or use against our allies.
- 25:57And I think that tariffs can, can be used that, but I think they have to be much more precision like to really be effective to tie that, you know, cause and effect of those tariffs.
- 26:10Okay, all right.
- 26:11And given that you're on the front lines here as a consultant and helping importers, exporters, shippers navigate all these changes and given that, I mean we've, I mean I don't recall ever seeing anything like this in my lifetime.
- 26:28Certainly as far as the amount of change and how quick.
- 26:32And I can only imagine it's a nightmare for these businesses to be planning, particularly with global supply chains.
- 26:39So what, what's the, what's the biggest challenge that you're seeing right now within your industry?
- 26:46I think planning and strategy and, and that's for companies of all size.
- 26:52How do you effectively plan when you don't know what's going to happen in 90 days?
- 26:56So we have this big deadline, August 1, which is at the end of the, at the end of the week.
- 27:01What's going to happen?
- 27:02Do we know?
- 27:03No, we don't.
- 27:03We've have, we have all of these announced deals but we have no details on them.
- 27:09And now we're hearing there is a major disconnect between the Vietnam, understanding of the trade deal that they signed in the U.S.
- 27:18agreement or understanding of what they signed.
- 27:22So, so there's no formal signatures, there's no formal announcements of these deals with enough detail that companies can actually plan.
- 27:34The only one that is actually in effect and considered to be, you know, signed and finalized is the UK deal.
- 27:43That's the only one that's had a Federal Register notice, that's the only one that's had additional.
- 27:48This is how we implement this tariff deal come out.
- 27:53The rest of these have been announced, but we don't have details.
- 27:56So if I'm a company, I need to know, you know, I am deep into Christmas ordering.
- 28:03I, I am ordering my Christmas goods and I need to know what my tariff, what's my pricing going to look like, what do I want to try to push, what are my sales going to look like, how do
- 28:14I effectively plan for that, how do I know what my pricing is going to be if I don't know, know with any certainty what these trade deals are going to result in.
- 28:23Many companies, you know, in the first administration moved away from China and they moved into Vietnam, they moved into Indonesia, they moved into India and now those company, those countries are being assessed additional tariffs like they were in
- 28:37China.
- 28:38So it's hard to even look at, you know, what can we do as a company to actually combat this additional cost?
- 28:46Can we move?
- 28:48One of the things that I tell all companies is know your data, know your supply chain, know where you have ability to produce and where you don't.
- 28:58A lot of companies also saw single source in the supply chain as a risk because they could not, if a com, a country was shut down, they couldn't get a critical component to manufacture their goods.
- 29:13So they have diversified into more than one location.
- 29:16So I think that gives them, those companies additional flexibility to look at, okay, if I need to ramp up here and ramp down there due to a tariff, how can I do that effectively?
- 29:27If you're starting from scratch and looking at can I move production from one country to another because of a tariff that's a whole, you know, year, two year long process.
- 29:38Because if that country doesn't have already have the ability to produce that item, it's a two year process to get them up to speed, build the capacity, get the manufacturing equipment in there, get the machine, train the people,
- 29:52get something up and running.
- 29:54If there is already an industry, it's much easier to go in and supplement additional manufacturing in that area.
- 30:01But again, we're looking at centers of manufacturing that are outside of the U.S.
- 30:07so that's, that's one thing that companies are looking at and how they can utilize their duplicate production.
- 30:14Another thing is having flexible pricing agreements with your suppliers, although suppliers are not very happy with that.
- 30:26Implementing for sale for large companies, even small companies are looking at that.
- 30:31How can I structure my sale a little bit differently within a legal framework?
- 30:36There's a lot of, there's a lot of companies out there selling things that I would consider aren't really compliant and could put a company at additional risk.
- 30:45But there are ways to reduce the valuation of your goods coming into the United States so that they can reduce the duty payments.
- 30:53There's also bonded warehouses.
- 30:55A lot of companies are now developing bonded warehouses, not specifically to avoid the tariffs, but to lessen the impact.
- 31:04So if you have a huge order, it's good pricing.
- 31:08If you order more, you know, in bulk, whatever, and you want to bring over a whole container, you can put that into a bonded warehouse and withdraw that on a weekly basis based on your sales and, and pay
- 31:19that duty over a longer period of time than upfront.
- 31:23But then you don't know what the duty is going to look like when it comes out.
- 31:27So it's, it's very, it's very hard for companies to plan right now.
- 31:32And I think looking at what you can control, where your production is, who you're doing business with, your, your contracting, the pricing that you have, the structure of your sale, those are all things you can control and that
- 31:46you can use as a lever when, when tariffs come out because you can't control what, what the tariffs are going to look like.
- 31:54Okay.
- 31:55All right.
- 31:55And Cindy, if companies are out here watching this and they, they hear your advice and they want to get in touch, learn more and how you can potentially help them, what's the best way that people can reach out
- 32:06to you?
- 32:07I have a website trade force multiplier also my email is out there.
- 32:11Cindy Allen, all1WordradeForceMultiplier.com Send me an email.
- 32:16I'm on LinkedIn all the time.
- 32:18I try to post articles and I do follow up on, on contacts through LinkedIn.
- 32:23So reach out and let me see what me and my company can, can do for you to, to help navigate this complex situation.
- 32:32All right, and we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
- 32:35All right, well, Cindy, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this valuable wisdom with our listeners.
- 32:40Be greatly appreciated.
- 32:41Thanks, Dave.
- 32:42I appreciate it.