OIA fearful of Trump’s 'damaging' tariff threat
08/05/2019
This would mean the 10% tariff imposed on outdoor products such as backpacks, sports bags, leather ski gloves, camp stoves, camp chairs, bikes and bicycle parts, would rise to 25%.
President Trump also called for a 25% tariff on a new list of imports from China that would total $325 billion and “almost certainly cover outdoor apparel and footwear”. The timing of those tariffs is unclear, though the president said it would come “shortly.”
Last week, during OIA’s annual Capitol Summit event, over 100 outdoor executives travelled to Washington and urged the administration and Congress to remove tariffs already imposed on outdoor products.
The Outdoor Industry association said in a statement: “We must continue to vocalise our strong opposition to these retaliatory tariffs that hurt outdoor businesses and consumers. OIA will continue to directly engage with key administration officials and Congress.”
When the first 301 tariffs of 10% went into effect in October 2018, price structures for orders already in place could not be altered, so companies had to absorb those costs or pass them on to consumers.
“Think about the fact that the China tariffs went into effect like somebody dropping a brick,” said Sara Bowersox, trade compliance manager for KEEN Footwear. “They weren’t there one day, and then they were there the next day. Everybody in the world had orders in process in their supply chain, and they were not expecting that additional 10 percent.
“We have no idea what’s going to happen on almost a day-to-day basis with this. So you’re constantly giving people the worst-case scenario, and when they say, ‘When is this going to be over?’ You just have to shrug, because you don’t know. It may never be over. It may stay forever. I hope not, but we don’t really have any perspective on that. The disorientation to the flow of business has been really, really damaging.”
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